May 2004: I am cruising around town with Prof. X, running errands and discussing the pragmatics of curricula for summer Tech Comm Institutes. She cautions me, “And if you ever do this, don’t ever make the mistake of asking faculty what they want to teach. I did that, and I got a bunch of answers like History of the Period. No local tech comm person is going to take a summer course in something like that.” Gawd, I say, laughing. And I mean it.

January 2006: I am in a split undergrad/grad seminar with Prof. Z, doing an impromptu presentation on the development of word spacing and silent reading. Suddenly, without warning to the students or each other, we find ourselves launching off into the evolution of the comma and the period. “The period, you know, first came out of the medieval scriptoriums. The monks started inserting them here and there.” Yes, but it was really popularized in the Renaissance theater, because the companies needed a way to indicate pauses in the script. Actors need to breathe. I stop, feeling 23 sets of eyes boring into us with equal amounts of boredom and irritation. Prof. Z forges ahead anyway: “But what’s really fascinating is the quotation mark! I’ve been looking into that lately...” I’m having a great time, in spite of the fact that we’ve managed to tick off everyone else in the room. I laugh, and I mean it.

I know I’m racking up some sort of strange geek karma here, but I have no idea exactly how it works. This is what grad school hath wrought, people.