Another mostly uneventful Sunday here at the Circulation Desk. Not even a crank to break up the monotony! I guess there's always next weekend...

I've been thinking a lot about languages lately, and in particular how I don't seem to know enough of them. This is not a trivial concern for me. When I was younger, I had these grandiose plans of learning as many languages as I possibly could, even making a list of how many I should know by certain milestones in my career as an undergraduate. And although I did get off to a fairly good start - Latin, German, Russian, Nahuatl, Ancient Greek, Middle Egyptian, and then Modern Greek, somewhere along the way the new acquisitions became fewer and farther between and the old ones (say my German, which is supposed to be good enough for me to read scholarly literature - hah! - and my Russian, which is practically nonexistent now) began to atrophy from years of neglect.

Well here I am, in the very Tower of Babel itself, Harvard's main library. Every day I am confronted with a multitude of languages, and I want to learn them all. I make my way through the stacks with a pit in my stomache, thinking of all the books that I can't read not just for a lack of time, but for a basic lack of understanding. For some reason this is bothering me more than it used to. Now that I'm on this side of the river, and poised to return to student status, perhaps I can set my nose to the grindstone and get myself back on that imaginary schedule of my childhood.

Hey, it worked for my writing!