It is the greatest library ever. Unfortunately, since I am no longer a student or faculty member, I no longer have access to the stacks. Ah the stacks. Pure bliss. Levels and levels of treasures, movable shelves, ancient study carrels… I really miss that place. I'll have to post about that later.
Since I was not able to hang out in the stacks and since I was not prepared to do any big searches and since I did not have enough change to photocopy articles out of recent journals on the open shelves in the Education and Modern Languages & Linguistics libraries (Libraries within libraries! It's like Disneyworld for geeks.), I decided instead to go to the café within the library (This place is better than a mall!) and grade student papers.
The café is one of multiple branches of the café that I frequented when I was a grad student. It wasn't great, but it was convenient. Toward the end of my time in school, the café opened a branch in the small space between the underground Undergraduate Library (there's a great story about that -- you'll have to take the campus tour or click here) and the underground tunnel of vending-machine goodness that connects it to the Graduate Library.
I made my way downstairs, ordered a decaf latte, and scouted out a table. It was a Saturday afternoon, so most seats were open. The first evidence that I was back on campus was one of the young women working at the café, well, standing at the café next to the woman who was working and bitching about her boyfriend. She was wearing pajama bottoms (obvious pajama bottoms -- not the ones that I wore to class with my oversized school sweatshirt), a tank top a la Drew Barrymore at this year's Golden Globes, and flip flops. Health codes be damned.
Once I got my drink, I made my way over to the corner to get a prime people-watching seat. I spent the next two hours getting an undergrad fix. To wit:
- Two young women speaking very rapid Indian English, who were way concerned about school. It was 1:30 on a Saturday afternoon, they're at the library freaking out to each other about school. I wasn't that bad.
- A young woman who was a tad hung over trying to recover from last night's Chinese New Year party. She was on her cell phone with a friend trying to figure out what she was going to cook for the Chinese New Year party that night.
- Two Dutch (?) young men talking talking talking very animatedly to each other. I found it annoying because I could pick out a word or two (maybe it was some wacky German?), but I had no idea what they were talking about -- except that it was clearly about hooking up with some women. Some things are universal.
- A young, tall, super-white young man -- probably rural kid -- with a backpack heavy with books. He was very put together in an outfit his mom probably bought for him and coordinated with some sort of Garanimal system now that he is out on his own (crap, they still exist!). He had on a baseball cap and glasses that he got when he was a freshman in high school. He sat down at the table across from me and got out a bag of carrots. He pulled a book out of his backpack, took off his hat and his glasses. Then he left for a moment to go around the corner to get a bag of potato chips and a can of pop from the gallery of vending machines in the tunnel between the libraries. (See what happens without parental supervision? This kid was going nuts!) To his credit, he ate the carrots along with his contraband. He opened his book of choice and held it two inches from his face while he indulged allowing me to see the cover. I too had my glasses off, but still thought I could see Captain America. I nonchalantly replaced my glasses. Yep, he was reading a Captain America comic. I thought it was sweet. Then I noticed the library label on it. He was reading a Captain America comic book that he had checked out from the library.
I freakin' love libraries. Which reminds me. A faculty member at one of my recent workshops made fun of me for stating (allegedly) "I just love annotated bibliographies." What can I say? I'm a geek.
