It is a four level u-shape building. Computer engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science graduate students, faculty, staff, and post-docs live there. If you ask the PhD students, they will say it is dark, depressing, dirty, and smelly, not to mention the air is stuffed and does not flow well. If you ask the faculty it has spacious offices, with good view, specially the corner offices. I think they all agree it is colorless and dull. I think gray is the word. Yes, it is gray. I always associated A. V. Williams with gray. Its view even though the bricks try to distract you from the gray sides, its dirty carpets inside, the depression and pressures floating around, it is gray all over.
There has been many efforts to change this grayness throughout the years. Fancy coffee lounges were opened on first and forth floor. A place for students and faculty to escape their cubicles, chat over a cup of tea or coffee, and maybe play some Foosball to release some stress. Some more improvements occurred after my time there. They painted the walls of the first floor red and yellow, for the school colors. They have put fancy monitors showing the directory of the building. They have tried so hard to add color and excitement to this gray building. Somehow, I think it still lacks life, it misses natural light, natural air, and natural happiness despite all their efforts.
You see, every inch of this building is holding so many memories and sacrifices of so many people over the years that no amount of paint can cover. Many came through the doors of this building for the first time after a very long journey, from far places like China, India, Iran, Germany, Turkey, Korea, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, ... . In fact I knew someone who flew for the first time in his life, crossing the oceans just to get there. They came with such high hopes, leaving behind their loved ones, everything they knew, risking it all for a better life, education, and knowledge.
It was not long before this building betrayed them. It became a prison separating them from the life that was continuing happily behind its walls. It separated them from their loved ones. It deprived them of everything as vital and necessary as light and air. Then, little by little they started adapting, defining, and forming their own lives there. They fell in love there. God knows how many girls appeared behind an office door just to exchange greetings with that guy as he was done with his office hours or coming out of a lecture. How many guys went in and out of the lounge in a short period of time over and over, every time with a different excuse, just to grab a chance to talk to that girl who was taking a break over a cup of tea with her friends or was trying hard to work on a homework problem with her classmates, only if he could let her to. How many times he checked her through the half-closed door of her office to see if she is still there or not, who she is talking to, when will she leave so that he accidentally bumps into her. How many times he audited a class just so that he could borrow her notes, discuss homework and projects with her. How many notes, little chocolates, and candies were left on the keyboards to pleasantly surprise that cute girl or guy. You see, everyone was going crazy in that building. Such a small area, so much young, fresh, intelligent passionate energy. In fact, one student almost had a heart attack when unlocking her office door only to find her lab mate making out.
The hopeless romantics that they were, they were soon heartbroken in the same building. It would not take long for him to see her going home with another and ignoring him. In fact, he could see flowers she received on Valentine's Day strategically placed on a table in front of the door. Oh, and how many shed tears in the bathrooms, behind the monitors in their very own cubicles, their precious territory as little as it was, when they sensed the look they were looking forward to had died; or when a mother had sent her baby away with the grandparents for a few months back home just so that she could finish that dissertation. She could not stop crying in the office; cursing and blaming herself for what she did. Or when he heard his father was in bad condition and he better get home soon if he wanted to see him one last time. People's hearts were constantly broken, and those walls, those dirty couches, those nasty carpets witnessed everything.
Love, hate, jealousy, sadness were not the only emotions that people felt and lived through there. One of the big ones was Fear. Hundreds have been questioned and answered behind closed doors of each of the meeting and conference rooms there. They were not defending just a thesis there. They were defending and claiming years of their lives, the sacrifices they made, losses they had endured, justifying the pain they went through. What if it all was not worth it? What if they do not find it worthy? Fear of rejection, from love, from all those things you gave up to be accepted at this last critical point, from passing through this final destination.
There was another worldly type of fear too. When you are coding away and working hard and you receive an email saying there is a gunman in the building, asking you to close the office doors and not get out until the next email. A gunman who could not tolerate all the grayness anymore; who blamed the professors and was angry at every authority in that building. When a sniper is loose in the area and you are afraid to move to/from that nasty building. The fear of thieves stealing a laptop that cost God knows how many weeks of your salary. Fear of not being able to afford the school, to graduate, fear of being trapped in that gray building forever.
A. V. Williams; you can check in, but you can never check out. Many ghosts, fairy tales, horror and success stories float there.
No comments:
Post a Comment