![\"20140326-5\"](\"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2014\/03\/20140326-5.jpg\")
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The above quote is from Robert L. Friend, M.D.\u00a0(Class of 1968). Read the full memory below:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The above quote is from Robert L. Friend, M.D.\u00a0(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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rock-memories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/rock50\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}