The Coffee Guy

He's probably about 5'10, has very curly blonde hair and listens, constantly, to indie music- The Coffee Guy. I enjoy watching him interact with all the kids that come by. Every day he has another question to ask everyone, "If you could listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?" and the next day, "If you could listen to on album for the rest of your life, what would it be?" He makes a point to ask EVERYONE that comes to his tent. While preparing my HOT Vanilla Latte he can tell me his life story and then some without even looking down.

I see the same people every day at 9:58am. The tall boy in the blue baseball cap (who, for some reason, is always directly in front of me in line) orders very quickly in a monotone voice and almost always ignores The Coffee Guy's questions. "Iced Coffee" he says. The little blonde girl always orders something different, and always takes 5 minutes to decide. As for me, I order the same thing every day, and occassionally if I am hungry, I'll tack on a bagel to my order for a HOT Vanilla Latte. Every time I order he has to reaffirm halfway through making my latte that it was HOT and not iced. Today a boy I'd never seen before walked past The Coffee Guy's tent and talked with him about going to Mexico. Like always, The Coffee Guy didn't miss a beat making my Latte and spent the entire time with his head turned in the opposite direction talking to this boy about Mexico. All of these things that I observe and all of the events that occur take place in a time frame of maybe two minutes. Today was special because The Coffee Guy wasn't paying SO much attention to my latte and put in extra Vanilla. This makes me happy.

Common Grounds

I'm sitting on the freezing cold tile in a hallway of the Social Sciences building sipping on my "blended vanilla latte". This morning I researched ways to wake yourself up sans caffeine, in vain (obviously). There is nothing particularly exciting about being here. Nothing especially liberating or inspiring. Nothing here that I see any potential in to motivate me to keep on truckin'. So I walk, out of my first class to the coffee cart outside this building, unaffected by my first few hours awake in the world. The line for this dinky coffee stand is 6 or 7 people long and I, with a small sigh, tack myself onto the end of it. After a minute the guy in front of me turns to me and says, " Isn't this great? Monday mornings" and smiles at me. I am not the only one who grudgingly pried themselves out of bed and felt a tinge of bitterness while glancing at her roommate who slept in instead of attending class. In that moment I felt accompanied by the rest of the world who also despised a Monday morning.

Being pessimistic and dramatic as I am I would give my first two weeks at college a C. Average, satisfactory, lacking the ability to go above and beyond. I would say that it has failed me entirely except for the one thing I actually adore about this institution: the people. The people, like the guy from this morning, who notice you, and who notice the camaraderie that is to be had. There is a lack of the idea of the "clique" and a maturity that allows one to converse with someone he or she may not know. Also I've noticed the overwhelming disappearance of social stigmas. This is not to say that social stigmas have vanished all together, but it is to say that they have dwindled to a mere minimum, allowing that guy in front of me to address me casually without taking mind to my social status/group/whatever. In this institution we are all students, we are all wildcats and for the most part, we are all, in some way united.

The other place that this idea of unity is presented and most proudly displayed is at our football games. We have temporarily discarded the notion of studying and learning completely on a Saturday night to paint our bodies, adorn ourselves with beads and stickers, to write obscene comments across our stomachs, point absurdly large foam fingers and to shout obnoxiously above the crowd, "U of A, U of A". My experiences at these sports gatherings are among the best I've had so far at university, I'd maybe even go to so far as to say that they are the best. The unity is what gets me. It's what ups my evaluation grade from an F to a C. It's the short conversations about brutal monday mornings with a stranger who also enjoys coffee that brighten my day and make me think that maybe I can do this, maybe I can do this because I'm not alone.