If I'm Going to Drop a Lincoln Every Time I Study, I'd Rather it be on Lattes than Benson Candy.

If I'm going to drop a Lincoln everytime I study, I'd rather it be on lattes than Benson candy., originally uploaded by dancindeac.

Matt and I decided to take a trip over to a familiar scene today, the Z. Smith Reynolds library. Circa 2001, when Matt and I first started dating, Z. Smith was where we spent at least 80% of our mutual time together. Heading back to the Z today brought back good memories, only now instead of swiping my Deacon Dollars at Benson and sneaking in a half a pound of candy corn, today I swiped my debit card and got a skinny vanilla latte. Spending your own money = way less fun.

But that was just the first change. For starters, as we were packing up to go, Matt looked at me and said "Do we need Ethernet cords?" The last time we hit up the Z, finding a prime locale meant hunting out a study carrel that was near an internet plug. Because OBVIOUSLY you couldn't get anything done unless you had the capacity to update your away message and/or check eBay for fake Kate Spade purses every 5 minutes. (2009 version: update Twitter and check out Listingbook every 5 minutes. We've come a long, long way, baby.)

Next big change: the scenery. The front two rooms of Z. Smith were always the All Night Study rooms and were decked out with sturdy, pine oak carrels with crude messages about Pi Phi's penciled into the sides, orange-ish shag carpeting, and a pegboard wall. And to think, I spent a couple nights in here... ALL NIGHT. can be appropriately surmised as masochistic, to say the least. (A little shout out to Mark Sperry and his vampire-esque IM habits, that accompanied me through many a 3 am paper writing session.) Today the orange carpet and pegboard wall have been replaced by Starbucks counter, leather couches, glossy pine tables, and upstairs lofts. The old geezer in me wants to tell the current student body how good they have it. you know, the ol "in my day.." But what's the use? Never does a generation really get that they have it better than there predecessors, and these chai sipping, iphone texting, facebook updating coeds would be as impressed by our hardship of smuggling Sprite into Aquafina bottles (NO SODA POP EVER IN THE LIBRARY, GASSSSSP) and renting out wireless cards as I am when my brother waxes poetic on the days of using the phone instead of IM to make plans in college. So while the times they are a changing, there was one constant in Z. Smith today that hasn't changed in these 8 years: I still have a huge crush on the guy I'm sitting there studying with.