So That They Might See

Party in Booth 4

On Monday nights, from 7:00 to 9:00pm, you will not find me watching Dancing With the Stars. Nor will you find me on the couch watching Monday Night Football (although, were you to stop by our apartment, you would find Ben doing just that). You also won’t find me watching Gossip Girl (but rewind four years and I’d be right there drooling, er, watching with my college girlfriends in the common room).

You will, however, find me in a 6x6 soundproof box in midtown, a copy of the Iliad in hand and noise-cancelling headphones clamped over my ears.

Outside the booth, you will find my friend Richard, or maybe Brian, or perhaps Maya, plugged into similar headphones, rocking out over a large soundboard and hovering over a double-monitor computer screen.

Recording a law textbook bibliography...oh joy!

If by rocking out, I mean recording classic works of literature and collegiate textbooks. 

These are members of my Monday family, and at the beginning of every week I join them at the Learning Ally studio to record audiobooks for the blind and dyslexic.

Growing up in Maine, service was a part of everything we did. Whether rounding up old toys and hand-me-downs for Goodwill, or mentoring in an English class in one of the elementary schools by my college’s campus, or ringing the bell outside the local department store for the Salvation Army in single-digit weather, volunteering has always been a part of my life. 

It always disturbs me when people bring up Maine’s supposed “lack of diversity.” Sure, we may be lacking in racial diversity, but when it comes to socioeconimic and educational diversity we’re all over the map. 

Coming from a place where sprawling seaside McMansions butt right into working waterfronts has always lended my volunteerism a sense of urgency, and the work that I do, familiarity. There are so few of us Mainers that I knew any way I could give back would impact someone I knew directly — maybe someone I went to school with, or someone who did municipal work in my town, or someone who plucked the fresh veggies out of the ground which were now on my full plate.

Howdy, neighbor

I’m not talking here about giving back financially — although that’s important, too, let’s be honest, I’m a young professional with grad school loans living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. The contribution with which I feel I can make the greatest impact is more of an intellectual one. I feel extremely blessed to have grown up in a house that valued education and curiosity — long before it was “cool” (I wish the “geek-chic” movement had been around circa 1999!). I had the privilege of going to school with brilliant minds and thinkers interested in social change. Not everyone (in fact, very few) have access to the professors, textbooks, and intellectual challenges that we faced, and were encouraged to overcome. So I see it as a responsibility for all of us to give back in whatever way our brains see fit.

After all, it’s good to share a little nerdiness every now and then — and when I hop into the recording booth on Monday nights I know that I’m helping someone who physically cannot read in the same way that I can to understand the text, explore it, and gain the same fascinating knowledge from it that I do. Because, hey — blue eyes, four-eyes or no eyes, a Classics nerd is a Classics nerd...and we’ve gotta stick together!

Citing Wikipedia? Really??