I arrived at the school to partake of late-night darkroom hours to find that the gallery had erupted in crowd and drink and, uncharacteristically, burlesque.

It was a show opening.

I pushed myself through the phalanx of plastic cups to ask the crowd socializing behind the counter if the darkrooms were still open. The answer: Yes. In fact, people are up there printing! And it was true—as it has always been true for those of us who bonded over lunch hours in the library.

At the end of the week, after 40 hours of fighting off incoming demands with boss-level skill, having talked and thought software and mundane business things all week, trying to speak formal, arcane Japanese is akin to trying to invert myself. The words fail to form and the syllables, once conjured in some shape in the mind, falter on the lips in trips and slips of indeterminate tongue. I just can't make the switch.