The injustices of fluorescent lighting

I’m currently sitting in the library because I know if I don’t write my final papers here they’ll be lost to the abyss known as four in the morning. That’s when I suddenly realize I have work other than thesis, and cursing each individual snowflake as it falls to the barren ground.

Although I’m quite fond of libraries, I find the Drexel Hagerty one rather claustrophobic and depressing. Not to mention how the fluorescent lighting makes everyone even less attractive than usual. It also makes me somewhat on edge because as a Caucasian I’m in the vast minority here. Between my mid-winter ghost like palor and bright red corduroys, someone had to notice a few minutes ago when I tripped over myself and fell on the way to the water fountain. Some of these students haven’t left these odd wooden cubicles for days, and could use some food other than the insufferable taco bell they decided to install in the “cafe.” Like lions with an acute interest in electrical engineering, they will hunt down the weakest prey and rip their backpack from their hands in search of triscuits or decent waterproof eyeliner. I’m clearly the clumsiest one in here and have to watch my back.

I tend to go here as little as humanly possible for a clusterfuck of reasons. Although I do have to point out they have a good selection of design books, which makes up for getting kicked out of the UPenn arts library. I’m sure if I went to an Ivy I would also have a warranted sense of entitlement, but we share the same bars you jackasses. Libraries should be held in the same respect.

The book I most recently took out of the library for “funsies” was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful And  Damned. It was so much more depressing than The Great Gatsby. Mostly because Fitzgerald focuses on the tediousness of a life completely devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. And then spends a few hundred pages getting his point across with the most degrading of examples. Also knowing he based the irritable protagonist Gloria on his actual wife Zelda made me feel empathetic towards the crazy bitch.

Even though she was a raging alcoholic who threw herself off a balcony for attention when Scott was talking to another woman and ended up living out her last days in an asylum, I’d be lying to myself if I said we all didn’t have “those moments.”

I also plan on printing the gorgeous book cover I posted above, I’ve never seen something evoke such exquisite apathy.