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As Russian Boot Camp winds down, I am struggling with the fact that being surrounded by Russian has not reignited my passion for Russian literature. Perhaps it would help not to be surrounded by boys in their mid-twenties whose steady diet of Dostoevskii is glaringly obvious in their Russian vocabulary? Maybe I should hang in the library surrounded by Pushkin, Mandel'shtam, Tsvetaeva, and Maiakovskii in an attempt to remind myself of what attracted me to Russian literature in the first place? I don't know, but I think that this is best done in solitude at the moment. While I attempt to come to terms with the fact that the half of my dissertation in which I currently have no interest is the one which will get me a job teaching Russian literature, I plan on being even scarcer here. I find myself wishing that K.'s tongue-in-cheek assessment of my current situation would be correct, "It's just a phase. You'll grow out of it." -Zh.