there used to be a playground

Found myself quite unexpectedly at school again after being unable to get an internet connection or phone signal where I am currently living (in the boondocks known as Harvard Square), and it was quite disorientating to wander these empty corridors, after lunch with a good friend and reminisce about all the times we would be rushing around late for class, talking smack about professors and fellow class mates, furiously working on an (inevitably) last minute assignment, having to work in one of those mandatory group assignments (a favorite of the Kennedy School) and silently grinding a pencil into my thigh as a self-important gasbag drones on about Iran's nuclear policy (a nother favorite at the Kennedy School). Eating from the world's worst canteen known as Sodexho where food comes to die. Trying to print yet another draft of a paper on school printers that ran out of toner and the will to live sometime back in 1975. Reading the NY times coverage of our school and a professor who quite inexplicably was named the "Prince of Darkness" in said coverage. Bumping into the various hookups and breakups on campus fulled by politics and desire. Talking to Pulitzer-winning professors who inexplicably burst into tears when asked about their personal life (or lack thereof). Obamamania on every corner and corridor. Damn, I miss this place.