Constant

Places that I frequent are Sears, Steinert, Orwig, CIT, Page Robinson, Solomon, MacMillan.

Page Robinson, Solomon, MacMillan… places that I had classes. Many classes.

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MacMillan. I’ve had my Chem classes – Chem330 and Orgo and a couple of computer science classes – Security and Discrete Math…

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Memories of anxiously copying millions of hexagons, chair conformations, proofs, and graphs into my notebook. Other memories involved laughing at a prof’s parody of Taylor Swift’s ‘22’ on set theory, taking a few 5 minute naps during classes, staring in disbelief at live buffer hacking.

The seats of MacMillan were comfortable, with the pull out tables where I write notes or have my laptop o…

Is there much that happened there besides from classes?

Besides some uncomfortable naps, unfortunately not.

Sears, Steinert, Orwig, CIT, Page Robinson, Solomon, MacMillan.

I want something where I can write at least five miniature pieces about them. And not care about the order of the pieces.

Wait.

My friends at my dinner table at the Ratty brought up an interesting question, after we joked about my habits of eating sausage salad for some meals.

“Rachel, how significant is your time at the Ratty to you?”

Sears, Steinert, Orwig, CIT, Page Robinson, Solomon, MacMillan.

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The Ratty is the place I do laps.

I sometimes do work in the Ratty.

I’ve had entertaining conversations with friends in the Ratty.

We always think that the Ratty is terrible, but I had to swipe many of my senior friends into the Ratty recently.

The Ratty is basically like a mall at this point…

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The Ratty is like a shopping mall.

The Ratty is a place where I spend a lot of time.

The Ratty is where I’ve had weird but entertaining conversations.

The Ratty can be a place to do work.

The Ratty is not terrible…

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It just occurred to me that the Ratty reminds me of a shopping mall.

The crowded lines.

The hoard of people.

The peak hours of the day.

Everyone squints at the printed menu for the food, as if they are window shopping. Some probably do it in distaste of the food, while others are just having a difficult time trying to decide what they deem is edible.

Usually, a meal would be an hour endeavor. But sometimes longer, especially if not in a rush to get to class and get entrapped in a super fun conversation with friends.

If I have a class in an hour or less and I see that the lines are terrible, typical me would go towards the salad line. I would grab a plate full of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, then make my way to the other side to grab a hot dog and a turkey patty.

Not my favorite meal, but it is a decent meal nonetheless.

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It just occurred to me that the Ratty is a place where I spend a considerable amount of my time.

Eating.

Interacting.

“Exercising”.

My Brown ID card is swiped by the entrance to the Ratty, then I begin my routine.

Starting with lap 1 of “exercise”, I meander around the tables, looking around for the five friends that I agreed to have my meal with. Along the way, I wave and smile at other friends and acquaintances, occasionally stopping for small chatter.

After making a full lap, I have deduced that they are not yet present. On lap 2, my goal is to find the optimal table.

Once I finally find a table and put all my stuff, I make another full lap around. This time for actually getting my food.

At some point, my friends would arrive and we would eat and have intriguing conversations.

After we finish, sometimes we get up and do lap 3 for dessert.

One final lap is done for leaving our empty plates before exiting the Ratty.

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It just occurred to me that the Ratty is the location for weird but entertaining conversations.

“I swear I had a Ratty pear that tasted like a banana”.

“If I had this cup of hot water, I think my esophagus would burn”.

“The sisters are having a Nerf gun war in the lounge”.

We would always chat seriously about something very funny at our table.

At least until we break out of laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of some of the content.

The “one pear tasted like a banana” was brought up by one of my friends randomly during a meal together. The rest of us listened to her pitch in disbelief. When she was done, the rest of us seriously tried to persuade her how impossible it would be. A friend even grabbed a pear from the fruit bowl, bit into it, and exclaimed: “This tastes like a …”, took a deep dramatic pause, “... a pear”.

The argument lasted for an entire meal and was mentioned for the next couple of days.

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It just occurred to me that the Ratty can be a place to do work.

The CIT.

My room.

Barus and Holley.

Orwig.

But I guess the Ratty can be added to the list if I don’t feel like going to any of the places above.

The lack of places to charge my laptop is disheartening. As a computer science concentrator, the possibility of not being able to use my laptop for working on homework can be frightening at times.

That being said, I’ve still worked on programming code, analyzing music, and writing pieces in the Ratty if I’ve arrived early or if I have limited time to do work that is remaining.

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It just occurred to me that the Ratty is not as bad as I make it out to be sometimes.

Crowded but with many friends.

Expensive but convenient.

Questionable food but with large variety.

As much as my friends and I make fun of the Ratty, I think we would miss it when we go entirely off of a meal plan next year.

I’ll probably still ask younger students to swipe me into the Ratty for the sake of old times. There were good times of laughing with friends about random things. There were also personal fun challenges, such as trying to have the weirdest food combinations on a plate for a meal.

I’ll likely be sad due to the prospect of cooking my own food everyday. I’m not the greatest cook, as demonstrated by that one time an egg exploded in my kettle. The Ratty is definitely very convenient during times of busy work.

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