It is August, and I am arriving at a lecture hall far below the stairs of the Humanities Quadrangle. Plato and Gilgamesh shroud my mind, and the Hebrew Bible is somewhere in the back knocking on the front door; hours in attempt of pouring over their meaning weigh heavily over me. The lecture hall’s interior is a lowly-lit labyrinth of nervous, but enthusiastic students, full of an inviting presence that I did not previously associate with Directed Studies.