Staff Writer Ashlen Renner watched the sun set from the eighth floor of Davis Library as part of the UNC Bucket List. She documented her experience here:
Davis Library is known as one of the best places to study on campus, but I call it the eight floors of doom. Everyone seems to have a Davis horror story, whether it’s pulling an all-nighter to finish the research paper due at 8 a.m. or getting stuck in an elevator.
Despite its menacing appearance and somewhat eerie book stacks, I have to admit Davis has a killer view from the eighth floor. That’s where I went when I needed to cram for my media law exam.
I had been sitting at a table beside the tiny cell windows since 10 a.m. I had not left my seat at all — minus a short lunch break, an hour and a half for class, an hour for dinner and many bathroom breaks.
Media law isn’t exactly rocket science, but it is an incredibly dry subject —especially if you attempt to study it nonstop for six hours straight. (I don’t recommend it. Please learn from my mistakes!)
By 7 p.m., my head felt twice as heavy, my eyelids even heavier. And it didn’t help that the sun glared through the tiny window and was boring into my left eye.
I was ready to call upon the ghost of former chief justice John Marshall — to whom, my grandmother constantly tells me, I’m distantly related. Distantly related or not, I wished John would magically give me all the knowledge of the law.
I wanted to stop studying, thinking about the million-and-one other things I had to do before the end of the week, and living strictly by the clock. It’s easy to get philosophical on the eighth floor of Davis.
I decided to google John Marshall quotes for inspiration. I sifted through the ones not written in legalese.
“The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.”
Though he wasn’t exactly Dean Smith, John had a point. I wasn’t expected to win every battle — or in this case, every lawsuit.
I slid my study guides away and watched the sun turn soft. The tops of the buildings turned orange and pink. In the cloudless sky, there was a light green film where the sun’s red light met the darkening blue above. I watched the sun disappear behind Memorial Hall’s towering theater and the bright reds turn into maroons and then purple.
I watched the sky until it got dark enough that the lights in the library reflected off the window and obscured the little view I had left.
I decided to call it quits after that. At least my horrible day didn’t end horribly.
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