River Ward

My name is River Ward, and I am writing to you as a senior to give you some advice: go to the library. 

I genuinely enjoy going to the library, which I know might sound uncool, but I promise our library is nothing like the libraries in the movies. 

I love going to the library to do work and hang out with friends, and while that sounds counterintuitive, hear me out… I’m so lucky and grateful to have found friends who prioritize their schoolwork as much as I do, so we can have a ball just doing work together. 

Another snippet of advice: if you find friends who have the same interests and priorities as you, then you’ll never be alone no matter what you’re doing. 

You’ll often find us on the sixth floor on a balcony overlooking the massive atrium, eating, laughing, working, or reading the “What’s On Your Mind” board that has a bunch of sticky notes of random thoughts from students, and some hilarious librarians respond to them with helpful information or comments on just about anything, and there’s always some type of meme or emoji attached to it, which is great. I check the board for new sticky notes every time I go. 

Hard stop, but the library always has some type of theme around finals week, and someone or a group of people (I’ve heard they’re in a secret society – ha! – but I’m not entirely sure) sneaks in and puts up a bunch of decorations. Last fall, the theme was Harry Potter, and we had massive Quidditch poles and all four Houses’ banners hanging from the ceiling and “Proclamation” posters all around like Professor Umbridge, but ours said things like, “Midnight Cookout runs are now PROHIBITED” and “Rolling the Quad is now PROHIBITED,” and it was just really fun. 

During finals, they also have tables and tables of FOOD and snacks and stickers, which I mean, who doesn’t love a good sticker, right? 

I’m running out of space, but I need to talk about my friend Ben, whom we call Bobson (Ben Hobson), whose claim to fame is that, during a midnight game of Humans vs. Zombies in the library (unfortunately, I don’t have the room to explain this, but look up the game; it’s fun), he threw a ping-pong ball on the sixth floor all the way across the atrium and hit a “zombie” and “saved” one of his friends. 

All this is to say, come to our library; it’s like an amusement park for curiosity.

As always, Go Deacs!