I trapped myself in the library at FIT until it closed, speed reading through dusty books, searching for paragraphs and quotations relevant to my research topics. I’d spend hours at the scanning center - they only had a handful of scanners for over 10,000 students - desperately trying to align chosen photos and save large formatted items to my flash drive. I remember the smell of the place - musty, like a badly cared for vintage shop, like opening an old book with pages browning from leaking acid. There were no windows in the library at FIT, nowhere to sit for a spell and drown in the sunlight melting over you. The College of Charleston’s library had 3-story high glass walls emitting natural light as you worked. You could get a tan writing a paper. Now my skin was the color of white mushrooms. I remember living and breathing that library and always wondering, “is this seriously even worth it?”
Sometimes, it was.
