In Love With The Socks A Student Gave Me After His Semester In London (A Gift From the Past)

I now have Big Ben socks, brought and bought to me from London from a student I had in Philosophy of Education - an English Education/Philosophy major who studied abroad in my ol' stomping grounds. I've said for years that there's not enough funky socks for scholars like me, but now I have some.

Throwback. 1992. I was 19 years old and I studied in London for the first time in a program called Literature of Exile and the Black British Experience with Chaucer Scholar, Bernard Levy, and post-colonialist Dr. Carol Boyce Davies. To say that the time abroad changed my life is an understatement. The people I met while away, the literature I read, the theater I attended and the locations I traveled were life-changing and beautiful.

I didn't return to the Isle until a decade or so later, when I was 27, and it was my last hoorah as a young person - Cambridge University and a Humana Scholar to study Shakespeare. I never got cool socks like these.

Yesterday was a back-to-the office day, where Dr. Kelly Chandler-Olcott was interviewed by Tanya Baker of the National Writing Project and where I could share the slight insight I had as a graduate student who participated in the first year of the study. Kelly did her doctoral work in Tanya's classroom. The circles were all connected on the show and I look forward to seeing how it comes out after an hour of recording.

The evening ended in a pool and with a series of Nailed It Netflix shows. Today is designed for new student interviews, a haircut and a dinner. It's hot, and also sad that I'm seeing the freedom of summer hours slowly disappearing (and I'm watching them go by on my Big Ben socks).

Very appreciative, however, of the new leg wear...they bring back memories, indeed.