Isn't it funny how sweltering summer days in South Carolina pass excruciatingly slowly? They seem endless from the moment you step outside and your glasses fog up to when you burn your backside on the car seat as you climb in to drive home from work. Well, now that my 21st birthday has come and gone, reuniting me with some of my best friends, I look at my calendar to find that my summer vacation is almost over. The end of June brought my book-list for European Studies, a study-abroad program organized by the University of the South, Sewanee and Rhodes College, both located in Tennessee. I will be flying across the pond along with about 30 other students to study medieval history, art history, religion, and literature at the University of Durham and Oxford (Lincoln College, specifically) as well as traipsing across Europe on a month-long tour of medieval historical centers of the Continent. After that, I hope to organize some kind of expedition into southern France and the Costa del Sol of Spain-- well, we'll see how "organized" that part is.
Anyway, as I was perusing this book-list it hit me that soon my sweltering summer lethargy would be over. Movies will be replaced with slides of medieval art and buildings, instead of checking Facebook occasionally during my internship, I'll be laboriously scribbling notes, and instead of To Kill a Mockingbird I'll be reading The Lindisfarne Gospels: A Masterpiece of Book Painting. This Janet Backhouse textbook, along with about 18 others will kill my leisure for the next few months, however, I'm strangely excited about it. It's true. I actually kind of miss planning my days around that paper-due-on-Thursday and curling up in bed to read Paradise Lost or what-have-you. It gives one a sense of purpose and achievement. So here I go. I wonder what I'll be writing after I spend $X on 18 textbooks and have a course schedule that induces permanent baggies and dark circles under my eyes. Meanwhile, the anticipation is killing me. England, here I come!
(Oh, and I'm terribly sorry about that unfortunate loss in the World Cup, mates.)
A page from the Lindisfarne Gospels depicting St. Matthew.
