Diary

Observation

i want to see normal people going about their daily lives. working. i want to be working in an atmosphere of people doing work.

university has all the facilities I need, but not the social atmosphere. it doesn't have real people living real lives doing real work. it has students who are disconnected from the outside world, from each other, and from their studies. it's a deprivation tank of normalcy.

UCCS university cafeteria

in a public library you catch tidbits of reality. a senior librarian instructing the new librarian how to do things. kids coming in from school mid afternoon. an elderly patron asking to check out a book, place something on hold, etc. librarians chatting 'cause they've worked with each other for years. people going in and out from work to home. unemployed lady using the computer to look for jobs. Hispanics learning English. Going back to school types looking to pick up a medical service degree.

at the university you have a work-study student manning an island by the exit, silently browsing Facebook. hundreds of students pass by each day, within inches, without a greeting spoken.

It's oxymoronic that students will go out of their way to thank their shuttle driver every time, but completely ignore other facilities staff, service workers. They pretend not to notice each other as they pass... unless they've had a class together or know each other through one of their friends. Then it's like heyyyy, yeah cool, alright, nice seeing ya. Almost out of place and unnatural amid a desert of lack of interaction among peers, when there are so many of similar age in the same place.

The university librarians are rather frigid among themselves too. It's hard to break the overall atmosphere, even if locally have reason to be normal.

At the university library, it's groups having insular exchanges internally, loudly if the group feels itself particularly of high social standing. But its elevated volume is not invitation to or sharing of its social discourse with its external environment. It's an oblivious to the outside cohort, unaware-dly expressing its feeling of belonging against a bleak and terrifying isolation.

By isolating oneself within a group, and stressing that you are of the group strongly, one defends oneself against the horror of being alone among many, of being singular, of having anyone and everyone walk by you without acting like they noticed you at all. It is isolation in the plural. Limiting your interactions to four or five people, rather than facing the ubiquitous blank scared non-acknowledgment of the overall majority of students around you.

But people on the outside aren't like that. They have their place of work they come from, and their home to go to. They're not occupied with acting like the people they come across aren't there, and waving across to people they've had some contact with before that proves they aren't non-existent. They may not talk to each other or interact with people around them for the most part, but their reactions to their environment are definitely responsive. They act according to their awareness that you are there.

They 'pardon me' when they need something in the way, or they'll look around you if they want something, or they'll settle and wait 'cause you are ahead in line. They might not say anything to you, but they'll look at ya and you'll see that they see you, and that you're not a ghost.

Students unnaturally act as if the students they don't know aren't there at all. They'll stand apart from you waiting for a shuttle, like the sidewalk was three feet shorter and ends where you stand, rather than act like someone was in front of them in line. Students if they unintentionally look at you and don't know you, will like rewind their expression back to before they seen you, as if discerning the shape of a person was a mistake and you aren't actually there.