It’s a Thursday night. Nestled into a cubicle on the sixth floor of the stacks, I watch as people flood York Street. Everyone wears the same uniform: a black puffer jacket, flushed cheeks, and a boozy lightheartedness. To the untrained eye, this mass looks no different than the typical group that wanders the street on Friday and Saturday nights: freshmen travel in packs of fifteen, hiding open beer cans in the folds of their jackets. Seniors walk confidently through the streets, drunkenly reminiscing about their early college memories. But there’s something missing. While half of Yale College spends Thursday nights in a hazy bliss, the other half packs Sterling Memorial Library. The only walk of shame they will be doing tomorrow morning is that from Sterling to Bass.
In many ways, Thursday nights are a microcosm of the sophomore and junior experiences. The days when we walked around Yale in awe, filling our camera rolls with new pictures of Harkness Tower every time the light changed, are over. The days when we will stroll through residential college courtyards, making a last-ditch effort to imprint each detail of the gargoyles’ absurd faces into our memories, are yet to come. Most of the time, we speed-walk from class to class, only taking time to appreciate Yale’s beauty when the sun shines down on Cross Campus. We exist in limbo.
So is the case with Thursday nights. For most sophomores and juniors, this night is just like any other. The excitement of BD Thursdays has grown stale, and secret societies are still shrouded in mystery. Personally, the highlight of my last Thursday night was getting to bed by 11:30 p.m.
At first, I missed the energy of freshman-year Thursdays. There was a certain je ne sais quoi about trekking home at 2:00 a.m. only to wake up at 8:30 a.m. for my morning poetry class. If nothing else, it certainly built character. Over the past few months, though, I’ve come to appreciate the tranquility of subdued Thursday nights. They usually go something like this: dinner in JE, followed by Herald production, then some studying in Sterling before making my final retreat to the Trumbull Library’s cushy, red chairs.
As I drill Latin forms into my brain for tomorrow’s quiz, sounds from York Street seep through the cracked windows, creating a soundtrack for my studying. I wear Airpods to drown it out, filling my ears with a playlist of obnoxious house music that promises to improve concentration (thank you Bella Panico for this suggestion). Maybe the same music is playing at the parties I’m not attending. As freshmen crowd into mosh pits in dark basements, I hunch over my books in the dim lamplight. By senior year, maybe I’ll go out on Thursdays again. Maybe I’ll join the crowds of seniors flocking to their societies, stopping at Heidi’s along the way. But, for now, I’m content with my hiatus.
