There was more than the normal assortment of students in A.J.’s Café at 9 p.m. on Monday.
There were still the groups of laughing students gathered around tables, not even pretending to study; the stone-faced couples separated by glowing laptop screens, pretending to study; the students sitting by themselves, pretending to text as they waited for their friends.
But this last Monday, President’s Day, the normal A.J.’s patrons were joined by the reading day crowd.
That included two separate games of Settlers of Catan, two tables of card games, a professor meeting students, and an influx of students who celebrated their three-day weekend by not doing any reading.
Sophomores Sam Stoneburner, Haley Pelissier, and John Walsh, as well as a friend of Stoneburner’s from his hometown, just finished their game and packed the board game’s pieces back into its box.
“This was kind of an historic moment for [Haley],” Stoneburner said. “She beat the people who taught her to play and, in some cases, the people who taught them to play.”
Stoneburner said he woke up at 8 a.m. to do Greek homework and practice for a chemistry presentation he had to give on Tuesday.
“I knew if I wanted to play two games of Catan I needed to wake up early,” he said. “That was worth waking up for me.”
He had gotten a group together to play a game after lunch.
“Who won earlier?” Pelissier asked.
“Brandon.”
“Sometimes that kid is crazy,” Stoneburner said, chuckling.
Pelissier woke up early to do homework as well, but two hours later than Stoneburner. After an afternoon of theater rehearsal, she ate dinner and then sat down to a three hours of simultaneous Catan and homework. She said she had enjoyed the reading day.
“Couldn’t have come at a better time,” she said.
Walsh had gotten up and was talking in a hushed voice to a Catan player from the other table.
“Hey! Are you giving her advice?” Stoneburner asked.
“No,” Walsh replied. “I’m just telling her what she did wrong.”
While Stoneburner and company were playing Catan, senior Mel Caton was just returning from a weekend trip to Florida.
After classes on Friday, Caton and her sister drove down to Fort Wayne, Ind. and got on a plane in “this tiny little airport in the middle of nowhere with one gate.”
“I think it was like 70 degrees all three days we were down there,” she said. “The weather report said it was supposed to rain everyday – which was the most depressing thing ever – but we ended up having fun the whole time, and it rained for like an hour.”
The sisters spent their weekend “just enjoying Florida.”
“It was really great. I though it was a little funny they called it a reading day because I don’t know about you, but I didn’t really need a reading day at this point of the semester.”
Caton said she did a grand total of 25 pages of homework reading over the weekend.
Back in A.J.’s, sophomore Emily Schutz sat on the other side of the café. She, along with a friend, was waiting to see Provost David Whalen, sitting at a nearby table, for her Victorian and Modern Literature class.
“Do you think we should get closer?” she asked her friend, as another student sat down across from Whalen. It sounded like they’d been waiting there a while.
Schutz, sitting with an open English literature anthology in front of her, had spent the day writing a paper she’d put off all weekend. However, she took a break long enough to take a walk with her friend and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather.
“I kept telling myself, ‘It’s February 20, it’s February 20,’” she said.
Her thoughts on the reading day?
“Best idea they’ve ever had,” she said.
Outside the Grewcock Student Union, a group of students built a fire in one of the pits set up by the Student Activities Board.
Crammed together on the non-smoky side of the fire circle, junior Jack Hummel turned to the rest of the group.
“This is like the time Sarah stole my seat,” Hummel said.
“I thought we were past that,” Sports Editor Sarah Leitner said.
“I will never get past that. It will define my college experience,” he replied, his face scrunching up into a mock tears as the group laughed.
Junior Elizabeth Anne Odell was supposed to work at 9 a.m. Monday but accidentally slept in until 9:25. She eventually made it to the library for work.
“I worked from 10:22 to 11:22, if that makes any difference,” she said.
What did she do with the rest of her weekend?
After a pause, she said: “I asked everyone what they did with their long weekend. It’s all the rage.”
“Well we kindled the flames of love,” Hummel said, gesturing to junior Caroline Forsythe. “You have to kindle them from time to time.”
Junior Trent Kramer said he though the reading day was good for the students.
“I think it’s good because a lot of people get to go home, get to see their family,” he said. “Also, people get to sleep in a little and get some rest.”
The conversation continued around the fire.
“Dental hygiene is the purpose of reading day,” Forsythe said, who claimed she’d brushed her teeth four times that day.
“Did anyone else know it’s Presidents Day?” asked junior Chris Waters.
Kramer said he was pretty sure Monday was the one-year anniversary of the 2011 ice storm that cancelled class for the day.
“That was so good for everyone,” he said.
“I think it keeps you going,” Waters said.
“It really does,” Kramer agreed.
“It gives the weekend room to breathe,” Waters said.
Sophomore Anika Top started her shift behind at the desk in the student union at 9 p.m. She pointed to a neat row of Harry Potter movies lining the edge of her desk.
“I have five, six, and seven. I’m here until 3 a.m.,” she said.
She’d woken up Monday morning at 7:30 a.m., which she described as “ungodly.” She and friends travelled up to Ann Arbor for the day where she studied in a coffee shop and ran some errands at the mall. She returned to campus in the evening.
“I grabbed some movies, did some reading, and now I’m sitting at my desk pretending to read, and watching movies,” she said.
“It was a nice break.”
By midnight, A.J.’s had thinned out. Gone were the groups of laughing students, the stony-faced couples, and the awkward loners. Both Catan boards were cleaned up and the card players were gone. Whalen finally left at 11:30 p.m., exactly an hour after his A.J.’s office hours were supposed to have ended.
Only a few students were left sitting at the tables, most of them working on papers. The only noise in the union came from a group of students near the fireplace, laughing hysterically as they passed around a smartphone.
“I’m not so well rested,” Top said. “But brain rested.”
