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Since I may be leaving the University of Chicago to pursue doctoral studies (a prospect that is entirely up in the air as I await admissions decisions), I took advantage of a mostly-desolate December evening to wander around campus. The year I spent as a graduate student earning my Master's holds many delightful memories, both professional and personal. On this evening (Dec. 23, 2011), I did a circuit of the routes I used to take between classes, and retraced many of the walks Maggie and I took around these grounds just one year earlier. Although I took over 60 pictures, I decided to keep only those elements of UChicago's lovely campus that have always signified the university's unique aesthetic to me. Sign, signifier, signified. An apt coda.

Hence, Exhibit A: Rockefeller Chapel lit in its Expressionist halo amidst the fading light of evening.

Exhibit B: Harper Memorial Library, which houses the expansive Commons within its third floor. Home to insomniac undergraduates, besieged graduates, and occasional flirtatious couples.

Quadrangle, walkway, arches, gargoyles. We traverse it without thinking, always eager to move through the distance in order to achieve our final objective. The spaces that separate events in our lives never seem to receive the contemplative attention they deserve. Like sentinels, they observe and are impervious to our unending activities. And when we are gone, they remain unmoved in their permanence.

Exhibit C: The central quadrangle of UChicago's campus.