As I sat at a table in the back corner of the library’s first floor, trying to read the last seventeen pages of an article on 19th-century American furniture, I found myself presented with a wealth of more interesting sensory distractions.
This is the perpetual struggle of the first floor – a battle of wills between working and watching.
On a busy night, the lives of some 2,000 Conn students fog the air in the form of conversations and gossip – people whose names we recognize, and whose stories we can recite; students we know without knowing them. From two sophomores’ Saturday recap to a loud and ugly giggle from the staircase, everything beyond the pages in front of me seems to deserve my all-too-divided attention.
This week, temptation has become even harder to resist. Denizens of the first floor such as myself will have noticed that the bookcases on one side have shrunk, from standing eight or nine feet tall to about three and a half. At their former stature, they were sparsely populated with journals, stacked horizontally; their new configuration conserves space with shorter individual shelves.
In many ways, this is a positive change. No longer must we wander through aisle after aisle, searching for a friend or an open seat. Unoccupied computers are visible from across the room and can be carefully stalked and ambushed like booths in Harris. Unfortunately for the easily distracted, however, this increase in visibility helps nothing, since the first floor is a hotbed of non-homework activity. Clocks are within glance, counting down minutes, and the library’s entrance offers the potential for social distraction with every new arrival.
From the comfy chairs by the water fountain I can easily monitor print station traffic, as well as the sordid fraternization in and around the cubicles along the window. Keeping an eye on that guy you’re into used to be a matter of shirt identification – faux-accidental walk-bys and run-ins. Library stalking – the thrill, the mystery; flirting with the most dangerous game – is an art lost to Conn history.
The illusion of invisibility and secrecy formerly afforded by tall, mostly empty shelves mirrors our delusions of anonymity of life on this campus. Freeman, Harkness, Windham, and the Plex are no more hidden from view than the Chu Room. In the midst of the new bookcases, we all have a new non-anonymity. Even seated, our heads just peeking above shelf-level, we’re confronted with this hypervisibility. The first floor is no place for secrets.
love this.