Graduate school has trained me to carry a book almost everywhere. Washington has trained me to look up from it. This week, the two habits met when the Smithsonian opened “American Aspirations” at the Castle on June 2. The exhibition brings together objects and stories connected with the country’s ideals and its continuing effort to live up to them. It was exactly the sort of place where a summer afternoon could become part of a graduate seminar.
My Catholic University course is part of the fourteen-week session, which means the pace is steadier than in the shorter summer formats. That does not make the work casual. It gives me time to read carefully, revise thoughtfully, and connect the material with research I hope to continue next year. Summer has fewer competing obligations, so the intellectual questions receive more sustained attention.
After classwork one afternoon, I took Metro toward the National Mall and walked into the Smithsonian Castle. Objects that might have seemed isolated in a display case became part of a larger argument about national memory, ideals, and responsibility. The experience reminded me why Washington is such an extraordinary place to study history, politics, theology, literature, or the arts. The city does not merely contain information; it stages conversations among institutions, communities, monuments, and people.
Back on campus, Mullen Library provides the quieter half of that conversation. I can move from a museum gallery to a reading room, from a public story to scholarly analysis, and then into discussion with a professor or classmate. The combination is difficult to reproduce anywhere else. Catholic University offers the academic home, while Washington continually supplies primary sources in three dimensions.
On Saturday evening, the Netherlands Carillon offered another free concert with sweeping views of the capital. It was a fitting conclusion to the week: scholarship in the morning, a museum in the afternoon, and music above the city at dusk. Summer Session is helping me advance my degree, but it is also restoring the sense of curiosity that led me to graduate study in the first place.