Campus

I had managed to take too many classes again. The profs at the university were different than the ones at the university in my own home town. These were serious people. The competition had been ratcheted up a few more notches. There was no end to the lessons I would learn, it seemed.

But the campus was a miracle that went on forever. There was no possible way to walk it all, but I tried. I loved wandering and getting lost, entering unknown buildings, sticking my head into classrooms and offices, reading the bulletin boards and things posted on office doors. There were libraries everywhere. Besides the two main libraries that sat next to one another, there were specialty libraries for Forestry and Engineering and Architecture and Fine Arts. I found nooks and crannies on abandoned floors beneath framed windows like images from old movies.

The new biology building housed a State Museum which possessed a huge, simulated limestone cave through which you could walk and study the strange forms of life that had adapted to the dark. Water dripped into pools that contained realistic looking albino fish without eyes. Nobody was ever there.

On the edge of campus away from town were the ranches and farmlands of the School of Agriculture. This was hill country marked by long stretches of wire fences and horses and cows and organic farms and driving through it, you thought yourself a thousand miles away. Nearby was a wildlife preserve with a giant population of a rare species of bats. The lake was full of enormous, unbothered alligators that filled the waters and the shores. Then, past the garden plots that the university rented to students, there was the Medical Gardens where medicinal herbs were grown and labeled with small plaques explaining the history of the drug.

There were dorms spread across the campus, each with its own amenities. I found basketball courts and racquetball courts and giant swimming pools. One day I stumbled into a village for married students. There were general stores and playgrounds full of children and duplexes instead of dorms. I had not thought of such a thing before.

"Study," I told myself, but it wasn't that I wished to do. I had fallen in love and all I wanted to do was explore. As I sat alone, my heart was full. There could not be anything more splendid than this, I thought. I couldn't believe my luck.