The 26th Floor

Here I am, on the 26th floor of the library!

That the library has 26 floors is only the most obvious clue that the people who commissioned and designed this building have themselves never used a library or thought about why anyone might use a library. It is absurd. I have already failed in my goal of never living in or otherwise using a building in which I am forced to rely on elevators.

At any rate, every floor of the library is filled to the brim with slovenly undergrads and their weird sugary coffee drinks. Except one. One floor, my friends, is closed forever to these marrauding youth, cut off from them by a single tasteful sign reading, and I quote: “FACULTY ONLY”

The professor at the gigantic state institution receives few perks as a result of their job. This is not your Harvard, or your Yale, with the unlimited departmental budgets and the free donuts at every meeting. Here we are in the trenches. Our building is not up to code and always smells like sewage because indeed the sewer pipes are constantly breaking. Our classrooms have a motley array of shitty technology that doesn’t work, and many of the rooms have no windows at all. The library stacks have lights only every other row, so sometimes you are down on your knees in darkness, scrabbling around trying to see if you’re at 2071 or 2072. Yes, they ought to do this anyway, because of global warming, but the only reason they actually do do it is to save money. At my old school we had to give up our email addresses. To save money! Meanwhile the President of the University was being paid $500,000 and tuition kept going up and up and up, but I suppose that is an angry monologue for another time.

I have a tenure-track job at an R1 university, but I have to share an office. This is my secret shame. The only reason I wanted to become a professor in the first place was because I wanted my own office. Now look at me. I share my office officially with one person, and unofficially with TEN. It’s a long story, but a tragic one.

Thus, I must schlep my stuff across the small footbridge spanning the frozen duck pond, and up the slushy walkway, and through the library’s revolving doors, and up to the 26th floor if I actually want to get any work done during my downtime between duties. Here on the 26th floor it is so quiet that I thought I would get in trouble while loudly spritzing my face with moisturizing lemon verbena skin toner! The only sound is that of professors furiously typing away from all sides. Math professors! Bio professors! Fucking Humanities losers like me! United in our shared desire to get away from the loud exchange students talking in the hallway about lamborghini importing (true story).

Actually these must all be adjunct professors. If you had an office, you’d be in it right now, not up here with all the rest of us weirdos.

At my year-end review I am going to suggest turning the abandoned haunted computer lab in the basement of our building into my own office. I assume this will somehow not be possible.

My current office is basically like the finale of the “Burgundy Loaf” Mr. Show skit, when the cockney chimney sweep named “Frenchy” comes in and starts loudly singing.

It’s no one’s fault (except society’s, for not prioritizing education over things like drone warfare) and I remain jolly. Especially from my perch up here on the 26th floor, looking out over the weird 4-H farmlands surrounding campus as they are bathed in a pink sunset glow. Soon I have to go to a jazz concert with 300 of my students.

Adieu