"Do you sometimes feel more isolated than you would prefer to be?"

This was a yes-or-no question on the graduate student life survey bubble sheet I was asked to fill out today at registration.

(Yes, registration is done by queueing in a big room and filling out bubble sheets. Bubble sheets being about as technologicaly advanced as the registrar's office has got here. Remember, this office is based in Cambridge, MA, where folks knit their own computers out of lambswool.)

Much mirth was the product of this question. I was hunched over a table filling out my bubble sheet when the guy next to me read it out to the girl next to him and we all giggled.

"No!" I cried. "I am not nearly as isolated as I would like to be! In fact, standing in this big room with all of these people is totally insufficient isolation! Damn you, GSAS, damn you to Hades!"

Then I stormed out and went to sit in a corner on the steps of the chapel across the quad, next to a quietly sympathetic copper drainpipe. Drainpipe understands me. Drainpipe loves my dissertation. Drainpipe is the only friend I need.

(Actually, I went and got a cup of coffee and a delicious brioche from Toscanini's with Boomy, and we had to go sit by Mister Drainpipe because a busload of Asian tourists shooed us away from the front steps of the chapel so they could take a group picture. This was after we were used as a scenic frame for one couple's photo composition.)

For more wacky tales of the start of the academic year in Cantabrigia, please see Twist and Tell, which is super funny.