University

 When I graduated, I had my photo taken in one of the most special places I had ever encountered - the library at the University of Oklahoma. Its vast Great Reading Room echoed with the sacredness of a cathedral and I was a poor supplicant come to feast on even the crumbs.

It was a lovely place filled with ideas, arguments, and information.  I could, and did, spend long hours there exploring simply exploring.

So often today information is the quick 'for the test' acquisition of select data. To be a student is to engage ideas not yet part of the curriculum that semester, to look out and dig deep.  To be a student is to spend time reviewing what great minds think, what the current discussions are in politics, society, science, and the humanities.

Knowledge is the synthesis of many discrete bits of bland information into one comprehensive and personal whole.

In the library - the place - is where so much of this process takes place and where the journey so often begins...