The above quote is from Robert L. Friend, M.D. (Class of 1968). Read the full memory below:

I started at Brown as a beenied member of the class of 1968 in 1964 and soon made the Rock my home. I remember studying at a carrel in the stacks with a view of the street. I spent more time there my freshman year than anywhere else as I buried myself and my fear in the comfort of books and solitude. I may have seemed like a bold, brash New Yorker to my room-mates at Archibald, but I was terrified inside. I also remember the time I made a discovery that has frequently been relevant to me as I work with teenagers as an adolescent psychiatrist. That discovery had to do with the way in which nearly anything can become fascinating, absorbing, and distracting when there is work and a deadline to be avoided. I was studying for some exam or other and found myself captivated by a book in the stacks near me. I was drawn to it as if it were the secret of life or a guide to sexual satisfaction…It was a book on census data from the early 18th century of the Pennsylvania Dutch counties! I was mesmerized and remember telling myself that this data was “really interesting.” It came to me in a flash that, no, this data was not really interesting but that the interesting thing was how I could possibly think that! A mind defensively seeking an avoiding distraction will stop at nothing, even census data from a long past century. As parents tell me about how they forbid their kids to use video games, phones, ipads etc. when exams loom in order to “protect” them from distraction I think to myself that what they really have to look out for is that fascinating census tract data.