In the: Harper Reading Room
Stepping into the Harper Reading Room, the silence envelops me. I never noticed how creepy Harper actually was, with the gothic architecture and paintings. It really does feel like I’m trapped in the 1600s, but with more laptops and fewer typewriters. Modern lights attached to high ceilings, and gothic chandeliers hanging above us, preserving this in-between state of contemporary and old-fashioned.
As I settle down in my seat, popping my earbuds in with Taylor Swift’s Midnights album blaring in the background, I take a look around the room. The room is filled with students, headphones in and hyper-fixated on their screens. That’s kind of what Harper does, it traps you in this uncomfortable silence that you inevitably have to do something, anything, to fill up the nothingness. It’s why it’s such a good place to do your work. No one’s watching you, yet it feels like something in the room is judging you if you aren’t doing something.
The people in this room are bound to do great things; future entrepreneurs, politicians, physicists, writers, you name it. But right now at least, we’re all kind of in the same boat. Same classes, same work, same stress. All of us knowing that we’re supposed to become something greater in life, but we’re still stuck in this loop of insecurity and anxiety. As they may call it: tis’ the college experience. Every step we take seems to be for naught, so minuscule in this path we call life.
Regardless, that’s the path we are on. Constantly moving, never stopping even to catch a break. I think that Harper’s ambiance actually appeals to a lot of us not only because of its ever-present silence but how it feels like a moment trapped in time. In this room, life isn’t so daunting, so quick to move. Here, in the middle of the present and the past, the only thing that’s going on in my mind is doing the work that’s in my face, and maybe whatever comes next after that.
All photos courtesy of Sonia (Che Hsuan) Chang
