A second home

Not too long ago, the sun and the moon glowed over the earth in equal durations, signifying that spring had sprung on planet Earth. Around the same time, the Duke undergraduate student body slid into its last month of classes. The simultaneous occurrence of these two events has made it entirely intolerable to skip class. Not only is the excuse that it is too cold go to class now entirely untrue but also the almost daily papers, presentations and exams our professors have conspired to inflict on us makes attending those last four classes entirely necessary. In response to these pressures, March and April at Duke are marked by a school-wide migration to the Perkins-Bostock complex.

As if to mirror the crunch we all feel academically, the student body crunches into Perkins, squishing into study rooms, occupying all the secret carrels and comfy couches and eating all the cheesecake brownies in von der Heyden. This infiltration of Dukies is not only present in Perkins, but also in Teer, Lilly, McClendon, French Science... basically all of my good hiding places. Every December and April, it seems as if the general student body suddenly realizes that mountains of homework and comfortable dorm rooms are incompatible. With seemingly 70 percent of our grades being determined in this one month, it is natural that most of us forsake easy access to Facebook and Flavor of Love for isolated first floor study rooms.

The severity of crunch time, for me, is indicative of the crime of attending Duke. The procession to Perkins represents our collective punishment. With its bland walls and dreary lighting (save for the Link), the library looks somewhat like a prison. The misery I feel whenever I am there makes it feel like a prison too. The hours I spend on existentialists and stereochemistry of Diels-Alder reactions feels like a sentence. The fact that I only leave the library for an hour a day to wait in line at the Loop further confirms my dreary analogy.

Perkins, and the hours of physical torture I endure there in these last days, also feels definitively like hell. Professors, the arch-tormenters of our souls, inflict lack of sleep, caffeine and hunger upon us. Anxiety and guilt serve as demons that prod us relentlessly. And the embarrassment of being the kid passed out at the Dell computers is equivalent to swimming in a lake of fire to me.

But more than anything, for myself and most of us, Perkins feels like home. Look to your left and you'll see the girl with the blanket and pillows coming through the entrance. Look behind you and you'll see the boy walking past with the four boxes of pizza he had delivered there. Look in front of you and you'll see that couple making out and furiously bypassing all decency and bases. Now look to your right and you'll see the amount of stuff you have amassed by your side: the bookbag, the two totes, the cans of Red Bull and the boxes of Loop, Saladelia and Chick-fil-A stacked on top of all your books and notes. With ease, you have transported your messy dorm and your hall mates with you into Perkins.

Beyond the immediate meanings that Perkins has acquired for each of us, however, I would say that Perkins captures the essence of Duke. Aside from basketball games and LDOC, I have yet to see a more common Duke experience than hiding in Perkins. Nowhere else have I seen a group of diverse people all act like robots, mechanically marching into the massive building on academic quad. It is also in Perkins that I have seen the most camaraderie in our usually competitive atmosphere. It is encouraging to see people pulling their hair out together over literature papers, while others join in a group grieving session over impending Orgo exams. But most of all, the phenomenon of crunch time in Perkins is our communal groan to the onerous influx of work that caps off our semester. And for me, even with the disappearance of cheesecake brownies, it is reassuring that I am not the only one trapped inside prison/hell/home instead of enjoying the beauty of the newborn spring.

Ashley Sarpong is a Trinity junior. This is her last column of the semester.