A Campus in Waiting

It’s one of the quietest weeks on campus. Classes are over. Exams are in process.

The place has a very different feel. Red Square is empty most of the time, with students occasionally scurrying through the rain with disheveled hair and sleepless eyes to deliver final papers to faculty offices. Others come in clumps, walking deliberately to classrooms to take final examinations, looks of seriousness and purpose writ large.

A group has chalked out various inspirational phrases on the brick of Red Square. Some remind the readers that they are wonderful. Others, that they will succeed. My favorite: “You are degioia my life.” But the overall atmosphere is very quiet. Lauinger Library is packed, at all hours; some students are sleeping but most are intent on reading, writing notes, and testing themselves on class material. The whole feel is more monastic than two weeks ago, when the campus was filled with shouting and Frisbee groups and tables with student organizations hawking their work.

It seems like it has been raining in DC for forty days and forty nights; today, it’s a light mist reminiscent of London. Despite this, gardeners and workmen are sprucing up the plantings, painting some interior and exterior surfaces, and generally making the campus more presentable for inevitable waves of parents who will arrive next week for commencement ceremonies. Whenever the sun comes out, the whole scene is fresh with blossoming flowers and plants, incredibly new-green ivy leaves, and a general feel of renewal and growth.

Outside the gates, there are storage services for students that are filling up trucks and storage pods with labeled boxes, small refrigerators, and some furniture. There are two rival used-book purchasers taking in textbooks that are still warm from intense last minute use prior to exams.

Soon the underclassmen will start moving out, and we’ll see roller bags noisily being dragged across campus to waiting shuttle buses, Uber cars, and taxis. The bags will be bigger on these trips than those for Spring Break. We’ll see the big ones, way too large for carry-on, stuffed to their limits. The faces will have different expressions – a lightness, a lot of smiling, but still a sleepy, over-caffeinated shell. There will be many goodbyes and hugs at the gates. All will pledge they’ll be in touch.

Of course, next week another transformation takes place — full joy overload. Proud parents, beaming grandparents, introductions of family to friends, laughing about old stories of years on the Hilltop. It is a week of rituals surrounding accomplishment.

But for now, there’s pervasive silence. It’s ironic that the end of all the energy and noise and excitement of the term is so quiet.