Thursday, May 20, 2004

Fiat

The morning of my second-year Latin final exam, I had been cramming for days, and I was in a tizz. I remember that, with a heavy brain and much tension, I got in the shower - the same shower I had been getting into daily for months - and at one point I became aware that the drain in the floor had 'Fiat' engraved in it. I had never noticed it before. In Latin, 'fiat' means 'let it be', as in 'Fiat lux', 'Let there be light.'

Fiat. I stared at it for a moment, and then started to giggle all by myself there in that shower. It was like a sign from God to calm right down. Let it be. It's only an exam.

As the Beatles would have sung, had they been writing for "Sesame Street":

Letter b, letter b,
Letter b, letter b,
Second in the alphabet, letter b!

Basketball and bongos, brains, brawn, briarpatch and bakery,
These all start with b, letter b.

Letter b, letter b,
Letter b, letter b,
Don't you love the alphabet, letter b-eeee!

Come on librarians, sing with me now.

1 Comments:

Blogger Rhonda said...

Gwen--I've said this before, but I sure love your blog. I too studied Latin, in Jr. Hi and in grad school (English, not MLS). Those kinds of serendiptous cosmic messages are awfully cool. I loved studying Latin. I don't know why, exactly. There's something immensely soothing and fortifying about that language. Alas, I don't remember a lot either. But I still have my Lingua Latina. I could go back to it any time. Brain gymnastics.

Afraid I didn't like library school either. I did love English Lit grad school, but not what I could have done with it. So I left my first love for a profession that allowed me to be intellectually ommiverous. Too bad the grad school experience can't be more challenging though. Surely it doesn't have to be that way? We need professional reform, I think. But maybe we can't have that in a profession that pays so poorly and has pretty low prestige.

9:10 am  

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