Abby Peschges
Winonan

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a library as “a place set apart to contain books for reading, study, or reference.”

I define it as the place where students chug Mountain Dew and coffee to battle sleep, read until their eyes gloss over, shove tiny packets of information into their brains and slowly go insane.

Many students at here at Winona State University are overworked and overscheduled and a lot of those students use the library; it can be difficult to find a table, or study booth during the day or evening, but it becomes a completely different place after midnight.

The library has an eerie soundtrack to it. The hum of the fluorescent lights creates a backdrop for the beat of the typing of keyboards; the flipping of a page and scratching of pencils provide the rhythm and melody of our song.

The thud of large reference books hitting the table is the accents highlighting the persistent research being done.

The smell of stale coffee lingers in the air. It mixes with the musty stale books stacked in tens of rows around us.

I call it the witching hour of the library. It’s the time where the majority of students go home to their warm comfortable beds, and the die-hards remain.

Some of the students are one time offenders who have a test or paper due the next day, but there are those of us that are there every night.

We never talk, but understand when a groan escapes and a head falls to the desk letting a pencil roll to the floor. There is no judgment amongst us, but an unspoken understanding.

A boy with heavy eye lids sits at the Circulation desk with his red hat turned backward. His jaw darkened by the scruff grown after a long day.

Only offering his help when asked. He looks up from his reading when he hears footsteps coming towards him. He smiles as students pass him leaving to dream of missing works cited papers and failed tests.

A silent good-bye until tomorrow night.

Contact Abby at [email protected]