November 1956

A student analyzed her studies in her junior year:

“My work is almost sheer recreation. Except that the supposition is that you delve where you previously dabbled, I could be a lady-of-leisure amusing herself. Music, a survey course which doesn’t allow for much independence of attack, Northern Painting—wonderful…. Aesthetics, which neatly ties up the painting and the music, and narrative writing and contemporary poetry…. Both are well-taught. ‘Narrative’ requires on paper a week with intermittent reading (the reading done with a positively surgical approach—word by word—and in poetry, sound by sound). The reading tempers your way of going about writing so directly that after every class hour, I feel that I would have gone about that week’s paper a little differently, had I had in hand my newest tools. It is most gratifying to feel progress so quickly, but I am beginning to understand that there is no scholarship without patience, and that is must come slowly. I will have to learn to mind waiting less, and I suppose that is a part of ‘growth’ too. …it is nice to have the library as your oyster rather than your chief ogre….”

MS letter