My senses are overwhelmed.

My friend Christian just sent me a link to a site that may make you sit down on the floor and weep from The Sheer Beauty of it All.

I've already been to two of the libraries they show: the Boston Public Library (the one with all the cool green desk lamps and that amazing arched roof) and the Library of Congress Main Reading Room (a circular room a little over midway down the page).

I think the best thing ever would be to take a trip just to visit all the beautiful libraries in the world, particularly those located in Great Britain, particularly those in Ancient and Awesome University Cities.

Maybe once I've finished my Master's program and have started working a Real Job I'll be able to save enough (even with the ginormous monthly payment on my student loans) to afford such a trip.

However, in the meantime, I've got a lot of gorgeous libraries around to visit. And swoon in.

Speaking of, I've now taken a tour of the library at Simmons, where they have oodles of comfy chairs and, get this, an ENTIRE section of books in the 'Biblio Mystery' category, in which libraries (or librarians) are involved somehow with the crime or the solving thereof. So. So. So. Cool. I cannot even tell you how cool that is. (I want to read a book where the librarian done it. (Er. Because I think that would be empowering?))

And also, I've now attended my first class, which, oddly enough, seemed a lot like an undergraduate class, except that the people were a little older. And much smarter than I am. And also they used a lot of acronyms I don't know. YET.

I have to confess: I've always rather admired people who've gone on to do graduate studies, as if pursuing a course of education after they've gotten their four-year degree made them smarter than average, or at least more determined. I never thought that being a graduate student would feel so much like being me; so much like not knowing much at all; so much like wondering if there's been some mistake, that surely they couldn't have meant to admit me.

I wonder if I'll feel like this all my life; if there will ever be a point in my accumulation of experience when I'll look inside myself and say, "Ah. Now I am wise; now I can see why I looked up to people in my position before," or if I'll always feel a little like a beggar who's somehow been mistaken for a lady, hustled into the castle, washed up, dressed in silks and thrust into the court without any idea of what to say or how to behave. Always a little like an interloper. I rather suspect that it's the latter, that the real reason why we look up to people who are older than we are is that we see that they have more experience than we do, but we can't see the large amount of anxiety and self-doubt they've still got stored up from their younger years.

I never thought that being a graduate student would feel so unlearned. I never thought that being twenty-nine would feel so young.

And I suspect it will be the same when I'm thirty as well as when I'm seventy-one. But that's okay. From what I can tell, all other thirty and seventy-one-year-olds have already felt the same way before me.