Abstract

I work every day in the Cornell College Library. Usually on the ground floor level, where the fast computers are. The other day I took an early afternoon break, and went up to the second floor reading room to get a copy of The Times and relax. As I passed through the reading room I saw a Japanese student sitting at the long reading table, studying his physics text. He was sitting up straight; the hard back book was standing vertical in front of him on the table, three feet away. The room was pretty silent and the boy was concentrating. I got my paper and took it back to the lower level to read. I read for twenty minutes, then returned to my computer, where I worked for an hour and a half. I finished my online teaching for the day, I packed up my stuff, climbed back up the stairs to the reading room, crossed the room to exit. At that point, tired and stretching, I usually don’t observe much. But this time I noticed the same Japanese student. He was still in the same position, sitting upright looking at his book, balancing it firmly in both hands. He seemed still to be in the same position of attention: nothing had changed, I felt, except the design on the page: a different graph of a different color. I went out through the main door of the Library, and went home