In the Margins

Reading beyond the lines.

I continue to undergo the final stages of metamorphosis from freeloader to taxpaying citizen, emerging from the collegiate cocoon to bloom into the butterfly of adulthood. And as I do so, I continue to find remnants and relics of the life that, at east in some ways, I will miss terribly.

One such collection of artifacts are the class notes collected from every subject from Russian short story to advanced digital signal processing. They capture a detailed account not just of the varied and esoteric interests of your dear author, but the changing moods as well. An all-nighter, for instance, could be noted by the sudden incomprehensible scribbling on a page as I nodded away in class. Whole sections are written in entirely different handwriting, evidence toward some sudden change in temperament.

But it is not the laborious note-taking, and the near-daily hand cramps that come with it, that will be missed. Instead, it is the accompaniment to these labors; the small, hastily-scrawled notes and non sequiturs in the margins, thoughts from a wandering mind.

Unerringly, in every class, it was here that I wrote down questions that had been left unanswered by lectures, or thoughts spawned in light of new information revealed during the course of a discussion, or even ideas that came to light by daydreaming during a particularly uninteresting class.

It is the big blocks of text that got me through my classes and helped pass tests, but it is the scraps of text written in the small space of the margins that fueled a curiosity and a need to discover what else was out there. The former I returned to out of necessity, to achieve a college degree. The latter I returned to by choice, to ensure my interest and creativity remained motivated.

I don’t meant to slight the professors in this manner- far from it in fact. Excepting the moments when my mind wandered indiscriminately, it was their insight and thoughtful discussion that provided the spark of greater interest. Intelligent people talking about intelligent things somehow have a strange power to induce intelligent thoughts in an otherwise unintelligent mind. I’m incredibly lucky to have been surrounded for it for even as brief a time as I had.

Of course, the curiosity won’t suddenly disappear. Instead, it’s just a reminder to always surround ourselves with people smarter than us, with people that have something to teach us. And to always keep collecting our thoughts, no matter how insignificant they may seem. Even the tiniest seeds of our idling minds can grow to into the tallest of trees, if given the proper chance.