Last night Dr. Hall hosted her annual welcoming party for new graduate students. Her house is kind of hard to describe--one of those very modern, flat-topped constructions. The patio and yard were very nicely laid out,with definite a Asian-garden theme going on, and the interior sported a highly eccentric collection of paintings, sculpture, and other objets d'art, which apparently stemmed not only from Dr. Hall but also from her husband, a rather intense guy who has worked as an art restorer all over the world. For all that, the house definitely had problems with flow, and the rooms felt very boxy and cut off from everything else. It wasn't an organic design, I guess you could say.
This probably doesn't pose as much of a problem most years when the weather is nice, but it was raining last night, so all forty-odd guests were crammed inside, where it was quite warm and very loud. Eventually about eight of us first-years settled in a den/office that was cool and quiet and where we could actually hear each other talk. It was really the first chance any of us had had to talk to other "novices" about all things graduate school. It was a relief to hear the same concerns that have been running through my mind these past two weeks come out the other girls' mouths, and it was equally instructive when one of the older students in the doctoral program came in and started giving us the low-down on various things. A bunch of us are in the Palladio class together, for which we have an insane-sounding assignment due Monday that basically entails surveying the scholarly literature on Palladio since 1980 and developing a bibliography of ten sources that we feel best identifies current and future trends in the field. Our feeling on this: WTF. However, our informant told us that Dr. Cooper likes to assign these mind-blowing projects, without feeling that they're really all that difficult, and that we shouldn't stress over it too much, which was yet another relief.
All in all, it was a really good time, but as I had predicted to Sean earlier it didn't go too late; in fact, we emerged from the den around 9 to discover that most people had already left. What can I say, art historians just really don't party hard. Today I got up early, determined to snap a copy of Dr. Cooper's book from the Central Library in Philadelphia to tide me over until the copy I ordered arrived. This turned out to be more of a trek than I had anticipated. It did give me my first experience of Philly's subways, which aren't bad but which everyone's kind of leery of right now because some guy randomly attacked another rider with a hammer last week right in front of a security camera--and none of the other riders helped, naturally. After the subway it was about a five block walk, which isn't bad in itself, except that it was along a service street-slash-expressway, so more like a place where you feel you're going to be run over by a semi at any moment than a nice pedestrian avenue. The library, when I got there at last, was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, the book I wanted was reference only--they don't like letting expensive art books circulate. So as not to make my visit pointless, I picked up a different Palladio book instead:the one she had mentioned was a good text for someone outside the field who knows little about architecture. Sold!
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