Studying for Finals without the Finals

My wish to just be in school all the time is being fulfilled to some degree for awhile. I’m staying with a friend who goes to Guilford and the other night found us–after an hour of getting to know the WGSS department, and discussing how they should be the SWAG department instead–in the library with a clutch of people writing finals and studying and goofing off and doing all the assorted things you do in the last week of a semester.

There were the two people who were actually working. Earbuds in their ears, brows furrowed, looking up from their laptops occasionally to ask if there was a more precise verb for “creating solidarity.” There was the person who had been drinking since nine in the morning because her critique had already happened and that was the most important thing finals week held for her. She fell asleep for awhile, sandwiched between two students writing papers. And when she woke up only slightly more sober the occasional eruption of her snorting laugh was the loudest thing in the library. There was the person who took off her bra, perhaps because it was uncomfortable, I missed the preamble to this act, and then dropping it from the balcony down to the first floor was discussed at length, but never acted on.

As the night wore on people ran missions to procure snacks with the straggling bits of cash still left on their meal plan. We’d brought the leftovers from the WGSS social with us, but the cubes of cheese on the large plastic tray and the zip-loc bag full of hummus looked less and less appealing as the night wore on. Besides, everything is more appetizing when it’s procured as part of a procrastination technique disguised by gallivanting across campus.

It was funny to be there, because this actually wasn’t my college experience at all. Not only  was I not embedded in this group, as was made clear when everyone was being cast as a character from Thumbelina–someone was the mole king because she squinted without her glasses, someone else was the beetle because she was lanky, but when it came to casting me it got uncomfortable because they didn’t know me well enough to pick on flaws like squintiness. I ended up being the mouse who dresses Thumbelina because I was nice. Or something. (Can you tell I’ve never seen this movie?) It was also strange because I never studied with other people during my own college career (except once, for Chinese Cinema, which turned out to be useful because my future roommate pointed out that the name of one of the film directors sounded like the name of one of the Valar and that cemented it in my brain for at least a few weeks.) and I never studied in the library.

This evening was a more stereotypical finals experience than I ever actually had. I found myself stalking one of my favorite professors from Wooster on the internet. I read his twitter and wished I was working on a paper for a class of his rather than a Washington Post crossword puzzle. But if I’d had a paper to be writing I wouldn’t’ve been there. I’d have been hidden away in my room where there wouldn’t be conversations about the consistency and appearance of baby poop to distract me. It was because I’m not in college that I had such typical college experience–the sort you see in movie montages–that night.