High Rise

High Rise dormatory is Lipscomb’s biggest dorm. 8 floors. I was on the 2nd floor my freshmen year. Right next to the lobby. Grand Central station. With the TV blarring from the lobby, it was a wonder I got any sleep.
At Lipscomb they have a switchboard where they would direct calls from the main number. During night time hours the calls would get forwarded to the front desk of High Rise dorm. It was the job of the front desk attendants to answer the phone and direct the calls accordingly. I always wondered what kind of response the guys of high rise gave to after hours callers. Surely there couldn’t have been that many calls.
I always felt sorry for those front desk attendants. I’d leave for my 7:40AM class and find them sleeping on the couch in the lobby. What people will do for extra income. Supposedly it is subsidized by Federal govt grants.
Then there was the intercom system in high rise. During my freshmen year it was barely used. But in latter years it seemed to be used alot for fickle situations. Usually it was people waiting in the front lobby….they’d get on the intercom and say “Hey Joe, we’re waiting downstairs,” which would go out to the entire dorm. Yeah it was funny the first time. But as it dragged on, seemingly very frequently, it got to be just lame. Maybe I was just getting older and more serious about my studies, and I began to grow tired of juvenile behavior.
I was in High Rise for all 4 years of my college career. Started out on the 2nd floor. Then the 5th floor my sophomore and junior years. Then the 6th floor my senior year. I always wanted to find 3 other friends to share a suite with. 2 rooms together. But I never could find friends who had the same study habits that I had.