Oh the Little Freshmens

A couple of weeks ago, I invited two students from the Intro Workshop to keep me company during my work hours in the Print Shop – well, to stop in and work on their own projects. Both Katrina and Mac had been stopping by during Mike's and my hours on Friday evenings, and both had expressed frustrations with their limited access to the studio.

It's a new policy, but unfortunately, we have to keep the fancy new computers and printer under lock and key at the expense of accessibility. In past years, the shop was open to all comers, anyone who wanted to take a peek.

The solution works to my advantage: I get company, they get extra productivity time. And neither gets in the other's way, because Mac is currently absorbed in typesetting, while Katrina's passion, nay, life, is book binding. Of the two, Mac has been constantly present, and he often tries to wheedle me into staying longer.

I first met Mac at the Freshman Orientation this summer, when I demonstrated how to use the motorized Platen press. I believe he was the first to try, or at least one of the first. He had the first mistake, of that I'm sure, a double printing after which the bookmark read "BBOOOOKKSS" instead of "BOOKS," with a little overlap.

It's absolutely fascinating to see Mac's obsession with the art take hold. He's an English and Creative Writing oriented guy and basically lives in the Lit House these days, but he also works in the Media labs and carries his MacBook around everywhere.

Yet at least four days a week, the guy's in the shop, bustling about with trays of type, carefully composing quotes. He seized the bit and ran off with the idea of setting a quote on a postcard, turning that simple project into a book project involving the setting of around 80 quotes.

But that's not all! He painstakingly searches out new fonts for each quote, delving even into the far reaches of the cricket-infested basement for better specimens. Each quote involves at least two fonts and the application of his creativity in the design.

Clearly, he's finding this dusty old activity interesting.

It does my heart good to see Mac's chin-length blond hair from the top of the Print Shop steps, six cases of type stacked before him and seven unprinted quotes cluttering his work tray.

There are others in the Intro Workshop who are going above and beyond the basic assignment. One girl has set a poem that she wrote herself, and I want to ask her about the experience. Mac just sticks out because he's always around, constantly chipping away at the monstrous task before him. By now he's confident in his pace, and he hasn't wavered from his goal of 80-some quotes, but I just hope he's consistent in taking notes, because putting away the type for 80 quotes from what could be 100 different type cases is rather daunting even to me.

His persistence is comforting when I'm tired or disgruntled. It's refreshing to realize, as I'm starting to dread leaving in May, that there are students who are even more passionate about the Print Shop than I was when I was a freshman.

Usually, very few students continue into the Advanced Class, and many, like me, have to come back after a few semesters because classes and life get in the way. I like to think Mac will be there next semester, along with a handful of the others, and that they'll manage to eke even more out of this experience than I have (which is quite a lot).