The Beginning of a Memory Fest
Apr
13
By Michelle Dotts
Like every memory we have, the ones made at this year's Lit Fest I hope last a lifetime. I had the opportunity to hang out with one of the coolest professors our campus has to offer, made new friends along the way, and grew closer to the ones I already had on the trip. Oh, and did I mention that we got to meet some pretty cool authors along the way as well??
We arrived at the hotel on Wednesday evening, settled in for a bit, and then made our way to Baker Center for dinner. Because I have attended a fairly large university in the past and have spent a significant amount of time on the Athens campus, the size of it did not overwhelm me or amaze me...but it was fun to watch it do that to other people. After walking through three buildings to get to our final destination for dinner, we had already covered more ground than you would at the Southern campus. And for those of you who have seen the Baker Center, it is an impressive place, although some on our trip may deduct that the food is better in our dear Paddock.
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| How many OUS students can fit on a Baker Center escalator?* |
After dinner, we headed out to the lawn in front of Walter Hall to see the Maya Lin exhibit, the artist who also created the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. The picture at the beginning of this blog is from this sculpture and while it may be a little weird and hard to understand at first glance, I think if you took the time to read and reflect on the things written upon the concrete slabs, you would appreciate it more.
After that it was time for Lit Fest to begin, so we shuffled into Walter Hall, or the "fancy rotunda", and prepared for the first reading of the evening. We took seats in the back two rows (apparently we thought we were in church) and enjoyed the poetry of Dean Young and the short stories of Bonnie Jo Campbell. Personally, I am not a huge fan of poetry (a respecter but not a fan) so Dean Young didn't do a whole lot for me, but he did make me chuckle from time to time. Bonnie Jo, on the other hand was phenomenal and I was thoroughly engaged in her reading. We would see a lot of her throughout the three days we were there, and it was a pleasure to see her every time. We are even friends on Facebook now, that's how cool she is!!
We ended the evening, headed back to the hotel, jumped into our jammies, and headed to the patio for a little board game fun with Dr. Haugen and the gang. And then the first day of memories came to an end. But all that we encountered is sure to live on through Facebook pictures and friendships, status updates and tweets, and within the well developed minds of a bunch of 20-30-40 somethings.
*photo added by Hayley
4 comments:
Who you are talking about not enjoying the food the Baker Center had to offer? Oh, wait. I'm so excited about this new mass of friends that I have from the past few days and so happy about the good times we had. I hope that Dr. Hoggen had an equally enjoyable time. I'm glad that we got to know each other a little better because I feel like we should have been friends a long time ago!
Corey -- Are you insinuating with "Hoggen" that I ate more than my share? Hysterical! Michelle --I just want to add that SOME OF US did NOT go out in our jammies on the patio. Good times, people. Good times.
You will have to ask Jessica about Dr. Hoggen, we chalked it up to her being "tired"!
The Vietnamese noodle bowl I had was less than splendid, but at least I didnt throw it on the ground....or rather in the trash as Jessica did.
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