Late night thoughts at Green Library
As I am writing this, it’s 2 a.m. at Green Library on a Thursday night. Next to me is Analiese; we are sitting together in the red comfy chairs by the tall windows of the main hall.
We find ourselves talking about random thoughts that come up, like that one night sophomore year when we put our bikes in the trunk of a friend’s car and he took pictures of us at the train station (“Oh, where is he now? Didn’t he graduate?”).
Or something existential like:
“I’m gonna miss this place so much after we leave.”
Or something not quite so existential like:
“I wanna do the StairMaster.”
“Doesn’t that hurt your knees?”
We talk about Stanford. We talk about AI. We compare the “pre-Chat” and “post-Chat” eras; how much we were using our brains back then, and how lethargic everything is becoming now. We talk about our degrees, things we wish we had done differently, things we are grateful that happened the very way they did.
These short conversations last a handful of minutes, then we continue on with work again, until one of us interrupts the other about another incidental, yet pleasant, thought.
And I feel at home; I feel safe, at 2 a.m. at Green Library, on the other side of the planet from where I was born. I have this warm feeling in my heart that the day went well — I went to class, ran an errand in Palo Alto, went to CorePower, finished a p-set — the day felt productive, and tomorrow will be a nice day as well.
This is my last quarter at Stanford. A winter quarter. I never thought I would graduate during winter quarter, and that my whole college life would end on a random day in March. It’s Analiese’s last quarter too. We didn’t plan it that way. But I guess in some way or the other, it is meaningful that I am leaving Stanford at the same time as the friend that I’ve had by my side these four and a half years.
A couple chairs back in this very room, I was doing one of the big assignments for CS 107, now over three years ago. I think about how my world back then revolved around those assignments. Sophomore fall. That was a special time in my life. My friends and I used to hang out in groups and go to the library with people, and I find myself missing that communal lifestyle sometimes. I was surrounded by people all the time and we would joke about how miserable the grind was with whoever we were with, but looking back, I loved, loved, loved those months. I was really just figuring things out, trying really hard, trying out new things. For a while, later in college, I had thought I had lost that version of myself, but I ended up finding her again.
Now it’s 2 a.m. at the Green Library. It’s dark, and somewhat empty. It feels so normal to be here. In two months, this whole experience won’t be my norm anymore. It will become a distant memory. I will look back and say, my life had so much color, meaning and excitement back then. I will miss the sun, wearing summer clothes all year around, biking to CorePower with my yoga mat. I will miss looking around while walking between classes and admiring every inch of the architecture I see around me, still being mesmerized despite the years I have spent here. It was so beautiful and magical that it never felt real, I guess.
In two months, I will never sit at Green after midnight on the red chairs again, with my best friend next to me. Isn’t life so interesting?
College felt like a huge wave crashing into the peaceful sand of a summer beach, with its deep blue, its pace, the magnificence, the white foams appearing beneath it. After the wave, the sand is peaceful again, washed by the formidable wave; it’s a bit different now than it was before.
Walking towards Main Quad from Palo Alto in the afternoon, you see the shadows of the herbs dancing on the grass. There are roads that intercept Palm Drive that take you to different corners of the campus, like the Mausoleum, the Angel of Grief, or Cantor, and these green paths appear like entrances to secret gardens. And you look again, to the light playing around the trees, to this facade of green, nature, and sunshine, and it’s so perfect that you can’t even tell if it is real.
One of my favorite parts of the campus is the pathway in between Cowell Cluster and Tresidder, the one that passes by Munger. Walking on that street during fall, you are surrounded by a myriad of colors between orange and brown, from the leaves falling from the trees. I lived in ZAP during junior year, and I used to feel so at peace walking through there, despite all the anxiety of college and trying to figure out summer plans, internships and the future. That fall quarter was a true grind quarter, filled with p-sets, HireVue interviews and coding assessments.
During sunset, you see the most beautiful colors on Wilbur Field right after you pass that street, and every time it’s a reminder to be grateful. Walking around these streets now, I feel tears coming to my eyes as I remember that there are only a few weeks left of me walking through here as a part of my daily ritual. It makes me anxious and sad, to be leaving this campus, to be closing this chapter.
In a few months, I will be living in New York. There won’t be sunshine during January, but it will be snowing.
Nostalgia. I feel nostalgic for Stanford and for my Stanford self even before Stanford is over. Perhaps I truly had an enjoyable life here, which is why I feel so much nostalgia. It’s past 3 a.m. now, in the Green Library. I am trying to appreciate every last second I have on this heavenly campus, as much as I can.
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