Loungin' Around

I like to believe that most people have a common sense of decency and social appropriateness, though it may not surface in my writing. This week something that been occurring frequently that really irks me and simply begs the question, “Really?”

I don’t like to talk on the phone in my room because it’s inconsiderate to my roommate do so, so I usually go down to the lounge to talk. It’s not that I’m saying anything I necessarily wouldn’t want her to hear, it’s just that she’s usually watching a movie or studying and I don’t want to disturb her. The lounges are public to all Cunningham residents or, I guess, all students at Longwood (though not many non-North Cunningham students hang out in our lounges). The one I usually talk on the phone in is mid-way down the hall and contains a table, two chairs, and a couch. When there’s someone in that lounge, I go down to the main lounge, which contains a mini-kitchen and a television. When this one is in use, which it often is considering the TV, I go up to the second floor, which has an open lounge area at the end of it complete with several couches and a drink machine.

Notice I said that when there is someone in said lounge area, I go somewhere else to talk on the phone. You’d think this would be the widely accepted, generally polite thing to do. You would also assume that everyone would do this. Well, you’d also be wrong.

I had a recently-ended battle with a boy we all affectionately call “Lounge Kid.” Lounge Kid looks like a serial killer. Lounge Kid also never left the lounge for two weeks straight. I mean, it’s not like he had a sleeping bag rolled out and his toothbrush on the windowsill, but he was in there whenever I wanted to talk on the phone, working on some sketch for an art class. Lounge Kid is a creeper. Every time I come down the hallway and he’s in there he stares at me with a stare that says, “I’m going to make a dress out of your skin.” I usually try to make a pretty sour face back, hoping that the staring will cease, but it doesn’t. I think he didn’t stop staring at me because he was anxious to see what kind of horrible expression I could contort my face into each time we made eye contact.

Nonetheless, he has concluded spending all of his time in the first floor North lounge. I don’t know why, but he just hasn’t been in there. I haven’t exactly cried over it yet. But, Lounge Kid is old news.

A couple weeks ago I was sitting in the open second floor lounge area on the phone. It around eleven o’ clock at night. I had been sitting there for well over a half hour when this girl approaches; she was both on the phone talking obnoxiously and holding her laptop. She had one of those naturally obnoxious voices that you can’t really insult because you know they cant help it most of the time.

She spotted me and said, “Uhhh… uhhh…” into the phone. She looked at me, then at the couch next to me, then at me again. I continued my conversation. She then proceeded to sit near me, hook up her laptop, and continue her very loud, obnoxious conversation.

I understand that these are open, public spaces for all residents. But, mind you, there are four floors in the Cunningham building and two lounge spaces on each hall. There are 12 halls total. That means there are 24 lounges total. That’s not including laundry rooms, and there are 2 of those on each floor, and they’re usually pretty empty during the week. That means there are a total of 32 open spaces that can be used as a place to talk other than your room.

I can understand that most people are too lazy to walk down to South Cunningham to use their lounge, which is understandable. But really, you shouldn’t have to. I already told you my order of locations, and I didn’t even mention the laundry room. There are endless possibilities that don’t include invading a talk space that was already in use.

Just yesterday, I was talking on the phone in the small mid-hallway lounge. I had been there for about 45 minutes talking with my significant other about Thanksgiving break plans and such. This girl approaches the lounge, laptop in hand. Let it be said that this lounge is much smaller than the second floor lounge area, thus less reasonable when someone attempts to “share” it. So anyways, this young lady walked right in with a sort of entitled attitude; didn’t look at me and went straight for the chair then hooked up her laptop. I continued to talk to Erik for a few minutes, hoping she might get uncomfortable. But, she didn’t. Instead, she shot me this glare, like her voo doo mind trick or something was going to make me go elsewhere to converse. Instead, I just got sick of her creepily staring at me, and went elsewhere on my own.

Anyway, this whole thing is annoying. We are offered ample space in our dormitories, not to mention the student union, Java City, and the plain old great outdoors. You wouldn’t crawl into a phone booth when someone else is using it, so why double-up on a lounge?

 

By the Way:

This will be my last entry of the semester. My next entry will be January 14^th. Good luck on your exams, be looking for my stories in the Rotunda, and have a wonderful break!

Let’s Talk Registration

I enjoy my new staff position on the Rotunda. I am now the editor responsible for layout out most of the pages and doing the final grammatical edit of the finished product before we export the pages. Though it is what I love, I am in the office with my fellow staff members until the wee hours of the morning. That’s just some background on how the morning prior to registration went.

I woke up at 5:45 a.m., an hour after I had gotten home from the office, and got all of my numbers typed into the designated registration page like my peer mentors advised me to do. That way, I could click submit right at 6. I did so.

Let me offer you some insight into my course plan for spring semester. I had five classes in mind, and two of them had fewer than ten seats available. Upperclassmen, athletes, and honors students get to register first; freshmen are last. In my mind, this meant that the other 1,000 freshmen were surely going to want to be in the same classes as me, and I was subsequently doomed.

The page was loading. In some cases, the courses that you submit can take up to ten minutes to confirm and load into the next page. Well, mine took thirteen, and then it stopped loading. The following sequence of events was a blur as I felt my future had suddenly turn into a black hole. (Obviously, I was being a little dramatic.) It happened like this: I refreshed, the screen went white, I refreshed again, a screen came up that said “server failed,” I exited, tried to log back in, and it told me my username was invalid.

    I was livid, and the conclusion of the situation was a reality that I don’t handle very well: out of my control. And so, I shot my adviser an e-mail saying I needed to meet with him ASAP to register for classes, turned my computer off, and went back to bed.

The hum of the distant Bedford Hall construction awoke me the next morning around eleven thirty. I contemplating rolling over and falling back asleep, considering I didn’t have class until three that day, but instead I made the conscious decision to check my e-mail first.

Of course, there was an e-mail from my adviser waiting for me in my inbox. It read, “Hello Sarah, come by my office this morning at eleven o’ clock and we’ll get it all sorted out.” My eyes narrowed like movie characters’ do when they see a natural disaster heading straight for where they’re standing. I muttered some choice words about my bad karma, got dressed, and headed out into the grey nor’easter weather toward the communications building.

My adviser was on his lunch break, inevitably, when I got there around eleven forty-five, so I sat outside of his office until he came back to drop his things off before his one o’ clock class. I sat patiently, dripping wet, until he came around the corner at a little after twelve thirty.

I apologized for my tardiness, explained the situation, and followed him into his office. Luckily, he was able to help me register before his next class. I got into three of the classes I needed, and I am still waiting on an override on the other two. He reassured me that not getting into the exact classes you need right away is not the end of the world, and that everything would work itself out.

Knowing that he does sometimes read this blog, I would like to again thank Dr. Rao very much for being so patient and helpful during my spring registration process.

 

Other Updates

1. At dinner on Tuesday, I spilled an entire bowl of Coco Puffs all over the table my roommate Emily and I were sitting at. She often cares far too much about what others think of her, and so to push her buttons, I took ten minutes to wash my hands and left her sitting at the table while the workers mopped up the milk and cereal from the ground. Needless to say, it was very funny. I sometimes take small opportunities to put Emily in embarrassing situations so that she will learn to not care as much as she does about everyone else’s opinion; I don’t do it to be mean, I do it so that she will learn to laugh at herself, which is a skill I think everyone should develop.

2. The photo below is our suitemate’s latest attempt to “stick it” to us. In case you can’t see, it is a tissue hanging on the empty toilet paper holder. They have obviously abandoned our alternating toilet paper system. I am absolutely heart-broken.

I have a cold. I have had a cold for four days now. On Monday I called the health clinic. The man who answered the phone asked for my symptoms and my temperature. I told him I had been sneezing all morning and had a runny nose. He asked my temperature and I told him that I didn’t have a thermometer. He told me to go to the front desk because they have them, then to call him back after I got my temperature. Okay.

The front desk was closed, of course. I called him back and told him this. He was very quiet for about thirty seconds. The idea that the Cunningham front desk was closed was not an unfathomable one. He finally said to call him back when I had my temperature, because “they can’t work you in unless you have a fever of over 100.” He told me to review the swine flu awareness checklist to see if I had any of the symptoms it mentioned before I call him back. Are you kidding me? I hung up.

I understand this is a pandemic. I know it’s plagued a lot of people and it’s a serious problem. But when did it become the only sickness there is? Not everyone who has a runny nose and is sneezy has the godforsaken H1N1 disease. I don’t have a headache. I don’t have the runs. And I don’t “feel like I’ve been hit by a bus”. I have a COLD, a common COLD. And I just want you to confirm that, health clinic. I don’t want any more literature on swine flu.

I got my nifty disposable thermometer from the front desk once it opened. I had no fever Still, needless to say, they should stop letting students work the phones in the clinic. Though, in their defense, I understand they were down a nurse practitioner this week.

 

 

I had two tests and one paper last week. I was in the library a lot. The problem that I am about to expand on only reached maximum annoyance this past week, since I was spending lots of time there studying.

The downstairs of the library is filled with workstations and computers. It’s for group projects and research. The talkativeness there is understandable. Upstairs, there are signs hung up that read “quiet area: please no phone calls, just texting.” I have always understood the upstairs portion of the library of somewhere that is quiet all together. Everyone seems to keep relatively quiet, and I thought that cell phone conversations were generally a no-go in the library all together.

Last week I observed something that happens often in Greenwood Library, as it does in probably all college libraries (doesn’t make it any less annoying). The scenario is as follows: Two girls sitting three tables down from me are studying together. They have been relatively quiet, reducing their conversation to murmuring with the occasional eruption of laughter as one shows the other a text she had received. They then go back to studying.

They weren’t bothering me in the least. When I’m studying, no room can be quiet enough, though I have to recognize that the library is a shared space. What happens next is something I can’t stand anywhere; whether it’s in the library or anywhere else.

A boy approaches their table and starts talking to one of them. The eruptions of laughter become more frequent and loud. They continue talking and then the ultimate sign of distraction commences: the girl conversing with the boy puts down the note cards she was quizzing her friend with.

This is a horrendous downward spiral. They will continue talking for a few minutes, distracting the living hell out of me with their giggling and gossip, then, eventually, the boy will leave. Alas, it’s not over yet. Once the boy is out of ear shot or, even better, out of the library, the two girls proceed to scrutinize what all he said. They go on discussing the discussion they both just had with this boy for the next twenty-ish minutes.

 

I’ve decided that no one really studies in pairs anymore. It’s just a weak attempt to combine your social life with your academic.