Glendale College, 1947, Boys at Hotchkiss Prep School hiding behind plates because they'd told two college girls on a date that they were Princeton students, Women at Stephens College, Missouri, Florida State University, 1952, College boys in a phone booth, 1959.
I could spend hours looking through the Life Magazine archives, and actually quite often I do. I only have 4 weeks left studying here at the University of Massachusetts and I've been thinking about it a lot, how great but fleeting my American College experience has been. I've been taking a class at Mount Holyoke College every Monday and have got into the habit of using the library there because it's so beautiful with its high beams and stone staircases and feels like it's filled with much more history than the crappy tower at UMass which hums and is oddly isolated so that the combination makes it feel like you're studying in a jet engine. So sitting in Mount Holyoke's Williston Library's reading room makes me think of all the people who have studied before me and all of the tedious essay writing and giggling in libraries and naughty antics that are repeated over and over again by generations of University students everywhere.
It's what makes me love looking through the Life archives and looking at the College students that never really change, not that much anyway. So here's a mix of some photographs I particularly love, purely for students being naughty. Or just inquisitive- God knows what they're doing to that poor girl in the third picture.. But mostly it's an ode to youth, College education or not, cramming into phone booths and licking plates are where its at.
4 comments:
I can't believe you've only got 4 weeks left it seems like yesterday you were packing up for your exchange!
today I had to head into my uni library for the morning to work on my essay on instagram - yes, yes, laugh away now - and it's a horrible building too but it's massive, and it has floor to ceiling window slit things at each desk, so you can sit on the top level and look down across Sydney. it's the best thing, I love it. And the naughty antics are great, too!
xxxx
love your the pictures.
i so miss the beautiful ad white room in uris library at my alma mater.... the staircase, the perfume of the pages of the old books. lovely.
life archives can engulf you, i love the nostalgia.
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I graduated last summer and one of the things I miss the most is going to the University of London's Senate House Library in Russell Square. From the outside it's one of the most interesting buildings in London, with it's huge Art Deco tower and tiny windows. Inside is equally as great, full of hallways you get lost in no matter how many times you've been there and old-book smell. It's the perfect place to read all day and eat snacks out of your bag when the staff aren't looking.
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