Recently, I’ve been thinking about the things that I’d done for the last time without knowing it. My dad put my hair into a ponytail for the last time on one random school morning in 2014. I played my final solitaire game on our crusty computer in 2016 right before it shut down for good, never to be opened again. Although I’ve never been a Directioner, I fantasized about the possibility of a One Direction reunion just a few months ago, but never again now that Liam Payne passed away.
I have a new item to add to my list. A few weeks ago, I found out that the Milton S. Eisenhower Library (MSE) construction is now planned to end after 2027, at least a year later than the initial promise. As a sophomore, it is hard to grasp that the project will not be finalized by the time I graduate (and considering how construction projects are at Hopkins, it will probably take even longer than that).
My last visit to MSE was during finals season. Not to study; I had to go to Krieger Hall from the Beach, so I walked from the M floor entrance to B floor and exited from that level to enter the tunnel that connects Krieger with Maryland Hall. My freshman self wasn’t aware that being able to use these shortcuts was a privilege as my sophomore self walks up the hill from the Beach every day, anxious that I will be blocked by another fence that will close down my path to class.
Unlike most of my peers, when I first found out that MSE would shut down last year, I didn’t feel strongly about the situation. I’ve never been the type to leave her dorm to study at a library; even if I did, reading rooms and Brody Atrium were better than D level in my eyes. At most, I joked about the situation: “How will people complete the Hopkins Seven challenge now?”
Although I’ve never taken the situation too deeply and let it sink in, now, I regret not saying goodbye. It is the truth that we inevitably do things for the last time at some point in our fleeting lives, and, most of the time, we don’t even know it. We somehow get over it in most cases, and even the nostalgia doesn’t stay with us. But what happens if you say (or, rather, get forced to say) goodbye before you reach fulfillment?
I don’t get sad that I won’t play hopscotch with my middle school friends ever again probably because I’ve had enough wins and laughs and falls from that game by the time I’d played it for the last time. However, I do feel incomplete when I think about my grandparents who are no longer with me. I wish I could play sudoku with my grandpa knowing that it won’t happen again, so that I can cherish every single second of it and get it stamped in my memory, instead of humphing out of boredom.
I feel the same way about our old library and now construction site. I wish that, the last time I entered MSE, I was doing more than looking at my phone and thinking I’d be back at that same exact spot in senior year. Now, all I’m left with is fake M and C levels around campus.
As I come back to my favorite turquoise egg chair in the Brody Atrium, I look at the concealed windows that border one side of the space and reimagine the faces I used to see (and sometimes make eye contact with). If I looked at the highest floor, I’d face a group laughing and being silly like they don’t have a midterm project due tomorrow. As my eyes traveled down, I’d spot “locked-in” bodies with headphones in their ears and eyes delved into textbooks.
To this day, I still remember that one day when my friends and I sat at a table in the atrium and one of us connected his computer to the television screen to play Krunker. All of us got distracted from our work and watched his game instead. Then, I looked up to A level and saw a guy holding a piece of paper: Turn screen here. So we did, allowing him to see the screen better, and he joined our childish excitement from there, as if we were watching a YouTuber.
Is it my intention to complain? Perhaps. It is indisputably upsetting to not have a library and know that I’m out of memories to make at MSE. However, I’m trying to find a greater lesson in this story, instead of holding onto what is gone and won’t come back. Returning to the library as a Hopkins graduate won’t heal the years-long absence of MSE, but I can use this story to ensure that I never feel this way again about what’s lost.
I’m using my feelings to find a new philosophy to live by: to live life as if I’m a butterfly doomed to reach the end once the sun sets. I engrave the smells, the sceneries and the voices as if I will go anosmic, blind and deaf tomorrow. Hopefully, I will stick with this mentality and never find myself writing a late goodbye again.
Buse Koldas is a sophomore from Istanbul, Turkey majoring in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She is the Voices Editor for The News-Letter. Her column discusses how her past experiences have affected her, with the hope of making others feel seen and understood.
