Engineering Student Proudly Tells Stranger ‘I Read Books’
Last Friday evening at a small party in Bryan, junior civil engineering major Vincent Nesmith reassured senior English major Camie Delarosa that he has spent his time in self-quarantine reading “lots of books.”
After finishing his English electives sophomore year, Nesmith realized he missed reading, so he made a concentrated effort to read more his junior year. To start, he read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five after looking up “best books of all time” and choosing the first book he saw published within the last 60 years.
“A lot of engineers don’t appreciate the value of a good book,” Nesmith said. “It’s outside the typical STEM comfort zone of numbers and equations.”
After classes were canceled, Nesmith finished Slaughterhouse-Five and then decided to read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. After reading the first 40 pages, he realized it “wasn’t to his taste” and instead chose to read Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
“I just feel like books play such an important role in our development,” Nesmith said. “Phones distract us easily and teach us to crave instant payoff. Books really have long-term, in-depth rewards that really teach us what life is all about.” Nesmith expects to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged next.
The Mugdown reached out to Delarosa for comment after her conversation with Nesmith. “Good for him, I guess,” Delarosa said. “I’m an English major, but to be honest, I haven’t read any assigned readings since sophomore year.”
—Anime Sciences
Treading silently through the Kleberg Center amongst the yeeyees and horse girls, we find Anime Sciences making his way to class with his head bowed. An inattentive freshmen accidentally walks into him, and suddenly the crowded hallway goes hush. A mind-bendingly long series of close-ups, confused grunts, and angry growls signals the triggering of Anime Sciences’ wrath as he unsheathes his katana from its holster. Uttering a rapid flurry of insults in English that somehow don’t match the movement of his lips, he challenges the freshman to either flee or face certain death. The fish scampers off. Order is restored in West Campus.