It was taken on the fourth floor of the university library during spring semester finals two years ago. My friends and I set up in the southeast corner of the floor sometime shortly before classes ended. At least one of us was there at any time, or else we left empty backpacks and stacks of books across any furniture we had commandeered as a seat check. It wasn't just the couch we had commandeered. There were two couches facing a coffee table, a couple of armchairs we found somewhere on the floor, and the two tables with four chairs each flanking the corner. The fourth floor's outer walls were made of glass-- that was one thing that made it so attractive to us; the other was that it was the least populated area of the library. There were two sets of double doors on the east and west sides that lead out to the balcony surrounding the floor. The eight bookshelves were in the center of the room and contained the library's anthropology collection.
The time we set up camp when the photo was taken was also the time someone forgot to lock the balcony doors. The balcony was huge-- it extends about ten feet from the building before the six foot concrete wall and wrapped around three sides of the building. From one side you could see downtown. From another angle you could see the professional football team's stadium. You could watch planes take off and land at the nearby airport. The windows were pretty close to soundproof, so we could be as loud as we wanted whenever we got too stressed out by the silence inside the library. Instead of going down four floors to walk around outside, or make a phone call, or smoke, we could just go out the doors.
The photograph reminds me of staying up late the night before papers are doing and writing them start to finish (and even starting to read the books needed to write the papers the same night!). It reminds me of 5:00 am walks to the donut shop across campus. It reminds me of walking to the 7-11 across campus at least once a night to restock on energy drinks and snacks. It reminds me of getting Chinese food, or pizza, or whatever delivered to the library as soon as the librarians were gone for the night because the security guard didn't care. It reminds me of the time when no one else was on the fourth floor, so we turned up our music as loud as we could. It reminds me of the taste and smell of energy drinks. It reminds me of staying up all night because we'd joke around more than we would be productive. It reminds me of lugging three bags worth of books from my dorm to the library.
It reminds me of the time we were up all night writing research papers for our Cold War era English course and someone pulled the fire alarm. It was about 8:00 am, and our papers were due by 11:00 am. We stayed on the fourth floor until one of the librarians came and told us we had to leave and she had to wake up our friends sleeping on the couches. We took our laptops and the research books (that weren't checked out and therefore weren't allowed to leave the library) and went out to the quad in front of the building where we sat down, reopened out books and laptops, and continued to write out papers. We were out there for forty-five minutes in the bright sunshine sitting on the dewy green grass before they let us back in.
It reminds me of that feeling of accomplishment and relief that you get when all your finals are finished, and of how sad I was when I realized it was the last night I would get to spend at Camp Fondren. It reminds me of becoming closer to friends and of how much I miss them.
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