Sleeping in the Student Center

After hanging out in Burton Conner until the wee hours of the morning, we decided that it was time to leave Laura and Sam to get some sleep. We, however, had no intention of sleeping. Well, by “we” I mean Hank, Harrison, Yuki, Jon, Dan, and myself. The girls weren’t as macho and went back to their respective dorms and hotels to get sleep. Psh. After dropping Michelle off in her hotel room we sat downstairs in some deserted hallway contemplating what to do next. We tried to order pizza but soon realized that there were no pizza places open at that time. What time you ask? 3 in the morning. Having exhausted our food options, we opted for a journey to the student center, open 24 hours, to buy some snacks at La Verde’s. Yuki and Harrison had a really hard time with burritos, they kept buying more and more, but kept forgetting whose was whose (Yuki’s a vegetarian, borderline vegan, and Harrison kept buying meat burritos). We plopped down on some couches in the middle of the student center and watched the burrito madness for a while, eating our own snacks throughout. Jon, restless, decided to wander off upstairs and find a piano. We’re not sure why Jon suddenly felt compelled to find a piano at 3:00 in the morning, but he did, so he left.

After we were fed and comfortable on our couches, we decided to check the schedule for exciting late-night events. The only thing going on was “Pancakes at Random Hall” at 4:17 am. The obvious conclusion, reached by all members of the group, was to take a quick half hour nap, spend the next half hour waking up, and then walk to Random for food. Jon wandered back after having found a piano and agreed with our decision to take a quick nap. Unfortunately for Jon, the couches were full, so he had to wander off to another part of the student center lobby to lay down.

Unfortunately, there was a fatal flaw in our plan. This isn’t entirely surprising, seeing as we concocted all of this in a state of insomniatic stupor (I made that word up!), but we forgot the little detail of an alarm to wake us up. I guess we figured that after two days without sleep we could take a nap on a comfortable couch and wake up in a half hour ready to go. That was a bad assumption.

The next thing I know, I hear these voices saying “Stupid pre-frosh sleeping in the lobby!” That startled me, so I opened my eyes and looked around. To my horror/amusement/I’m-not-quite-awake-and-don’t-know-what’s-going-on-ment I saw lights shining in through the windows, people bustling around, and all of my friends in various states of unconsciousness around me. I checked my watch. 8:00 am. Great. CPW registration was back in full swing, parents were wandering everywhere, soaking up the premier technical institute in the world, and a group of tomorrow’s leaders were laying on couches with their mouths open, drooling on themselves. Honestly, we are SUCH a class act! Oh, did I mention that Hank, who was smart enough to fill his backpack with hundreds of bouncy balls from the bouncy ball drop, was also dumb enough to leave it open and perched on the arm of the couch? Well, he did, and he kicked it in his sleep, so we also awoke to the site of about 50 bouncy balls having spilled from his bag and all across the floor of the student center. I helped wake everybody up, and we sat there for a while, trying to orient ourselves and stop yawning.





All of a sudden we realized that Jon was missing! He had gone to a different couch and we’d never seen him come back! We all jumped up and started looking for him. On the other side of the lobby was a collection of couches. All of them were completely full of families, and others were standing because there was nowhere to sit. They were also kind of staring at one couch in particular, but its back was towards us so we couldn’t see the object of interest. We walked over and looked at the couch that was fascinating so many people. We had found Jon.



He took up the entire couch and was fast asleep. I think the group of people almost applauded us for waking him up and freeing the couch for them to sit down on.

Remember how I said, way back when, that I only got 5 hours of sleep, 4 by accident? This was the accident, and it was also the last sleep I would get until I left CPW for home.