January Reed Writes In
January 30, 2026–Dear Will’s Place,
Happy New Year, and hello once again from Wisconsin! This month, I returned to Marquette University to start the Spring semester of my freshman year. I wasn’t happy for my long, comfy Winter Break to come to an end, but I have been settling in well now that I am back at college. My return to Marquette also provided an opportunity for me to retrieve a piece of merchandise from the On Your Marq program: a yellow sweater that I had intended to give to my dad as a gift, but forgotten in my room when I left in December. I sent the sweater home with my mom, and my dad seems to be happy with it!
It’s a new semester, which brings with it new classes, organized according to a new schedule. (I have four classes on Monday and Wednesday; two on Tuesday and Thursday; and only one on Friday. Needless to say, Friday is my favorite day of the week.) My classes themselves are all more or less enjoyable, but the workload that comes with them is not. Managing a college workload is a bit like being an ant carrying a crumb (or whatever ants carry)–you just have to get through each next step. Still, there are some positives. For one thing, at least I don’t have to write any major essays yet–that’s a nightmare for later in the semester. For another, I sometimes enjoy the things we have to do for class–like the screenplay that I’m currently writing for Script and Story.
Even if my work isn’t always fun, I do like my professors. They’re nice people overall, and all of them are willing to accommodate my needs as a neurodivergent student. Two of my professors–those whom I have for Foundations in Theology and Writing About Film, respectively–have written books. (In fact, one of my professors said that another has written what is considered the definitive biography of movie director Alfred Hitchcock.) I know my history professor last semester had also written a book, so I wonder if that’s a common thing for college professors to do, but the fact that they did it is still pretty cool to me. And it’s not just my new professors that are doing cool things. One of my former professors wrote and directed a movie called Diffraction that is now available to buy or rent on Prime Video, with significant help from Marquette students.
How’s the weather in Skokie? Since I came back to Marquette, we’ve had a couple of days where it snowed. I remember one Saturday where I went to the Milwaukee Public Library–I got snow in my face on the way there, and then I think the wind might have changed, because the snow was blowing in my face on the way back, too. But snow itself isn’t as difficult to deal with as the low temperatures that make the snow possible. I understand January 22 and 23 were particularly cold in Skokie; the same was true in Milwaukee. Personally, I feel like temperatures should not legally be allowed to fall to a point where they can be described with negative numbers. Maybe that law would be pointless, because coldness doesn’t really respond to human law, but it would sure make me feel better. That said, maybe I’m one to talk: at Marquette, classes on those days were cancelled because of the cold, so I got to sleep in on those mornings and do work from the comfort of my dorm room.
Before I went back to Marquette, I took the opportunity to sign up for the Will’s Place newsletter–which I hadn’t gotten previously. I’m glad that I can now be more in the loop about the goings-on at Will’s Place while I’m in Wisconsin! Of course, as ever, if anyone from Will’s Place wants to reach out to me, I’d love to hear from you. How did the colder weather on January 22 and 23 affect business at Will’s Place? What are customers thinking of the new menu items? (I tried the pepperoni pizza on focaccia bread while I was in Skokie–divine!) Have we had any cool guest baristas recently? I’m looking forward to hearing about these things, and more
Until next time,
Reed Larson-Erf