An astute correspondent who somehow remains pitifully trapped in Butler piqued Bwog's curiosity with this observation:

"Her Highness Sheikha Moza, aka the First Lady of Qatar, just took a tour through Butler. This is interesting because she is famous for spending billions to get American colleges to build satellite campuses in Qatar (check out Cornell's campus in Doha). Is she trying to build a Butler in Doha? Probably not. Despite being very pro 'the global university,' Bollinger said at his last fireside chat that satellite campuses were not in his plans."

So...maybe she's looking to build a study abroad center, a la Reid Hall in Paris? Or simply checking out Butler's avant-garde exhibit on the latest in plastic bag technology?

In which Bwog Staffer Brendan Ballou tries desperately to find something to talk about with Kira Kalina von Ostenfeld -- a German countess who graduated from Georgetown at age 19 to work for the FBI, grew up in Peru, learned six languages, and started her own art company. She's also a fifth-year grad student in the history department focusing on middle-ages Spain.

Why are grad students sad?

It's part of the culture of graduate school. And this is something that's happened for a very, very long time — it's nothing new. It's part of the intensity of the intellectual process we go through — it's suffering. We're supposed to be doing this for some higher call and we will enlighten the world. I mean we have a pretty sweet deal — the lucky ones of us get paid to be here. I think you're being unrealistic if you come to graduate school and think it's going to be cushy. It's difficult, so the lucky few of us who are allowed to be part of this should appreciate it for what it's for.

So you went to college at 16

Yeah.

So how did that happen?

Well, my parents are a little bit older, so when I came along my mother had already had kids, and so she considered me a little adult. I don't think it was a negative thing at all — I very much appreciated it actually. I was never treated as a child — I was always treated as an adult and pushed accordingly when it came to academics. And so my parents were very lenient in terms of everything else that they did, so their one requirement was that, 'if get A's and keep A's in everything you do you have free rein — you can go out with your friends, you can party, you can go to concerts, whatever, you can have a boyfriend.'

And so you had a social life in high school?