Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater.

Two days ago, we took you to that bright, airy temple of the mind, the Reference Room. We talked about the place where you put your butt. Bwog’s CC professor said that Plato is OK with sitting, so long as you’re thinking, so tonight we’re headed to another thinking-place, Milbank.

If you’re sitting in Milbank Hall, there’s a significant chance you’re in a Psych class. And if you’re in a Psych class, there’s a large chance it started at 9:10. And, if it started at 9:10, there’s an even larger chance that you were late.

Given this scenario, you have likely burst open the door to a room with a wide abyss and a lecturing professor at the front, and a sea of students packed so tightly together in those damn crowded desks that you cannot see the chairs they sit on. You stand, paralyzed, in front of the door as you scan the room for an open, accessible desk.

Cued by the exasperated sigh of a professor, a real-life game of Rush Hour begins; given the limited area provided by the Milbank desk, chairs must be shifted to create an aisle where there isn’t one, so you can get to the seat in the third row in the middle that was just too far for anybody else to navigate this labyrinth for. Though only a third of the desks are filled, all students are seated in the first three rows, such that you have to leap over backpacks, juke around grande coffees and lift your backpack over your head to avoid other people’s heads. Once you reached your seat, you placed your backpack on top of the radiator (because why would there be room on the floor?) and contort your body such that you aren’t sitting in your neighbor’s desk.

Now you are finally settled in your chair. As you sit through class, you observe the scrawlings on your desk as a means of entertainment, but stop when the only thing that reminds you that you are not in high school is the inscription ΣΝ. And when your mind returns to college, you become aware of the sound in your left ear. It is a pigeon, that is seated under the radiator next to your desk that has the pleasing effect of amplifying the pigeon’s cooing directly into your ear. Quickly the cooing becomes rhythmic, and blends into your professor’s voice. As you struggle to fit your normal-sized notebook on the abnormally-tiny surface of your desk, you give up trying to take notes. Before you know it the entire room rises from their chairs—some more gracefully than others—and begins to shuffle around to find the most direct path to the door. You remain seated—you won’t be out for another ten minutes.

Milbank desk chairs: 3.5/10 for the chair, 4/10 for my new friend, the pigeon.