After five years at USM, I have this semester found myself seeing this university in a new light.
Just last week, I was walking across Bedford St. from my office toward class in Payson Smith. The soon-to-be-setting sun caught the iced-over trees in the most perfect way.I wished I had had my camera, it was a school-brochure moment.
But aside from the actual light, I really have been seeing USM in a different way.
I walk across the “quad” between Luther Bonney and Payson and it feels like just that – a quad. Something you’d expect to find at some other school.
Perhaps my position-with hands always on the university’s hips, trying to sense where it might move next-has pushed me into a new kind of dance, but.No, I really do think things are different this year.
Maybe it’s all of the snow.
Maybe it’s the fact that, in this time of constant and frustrating news – from budget cuts to new presidents to the infamous 26 programs (and sudden coverage from the Press Herald) – people have started paying attention.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that nearly every athletic team this winter performed amazingly.
Or the frequent meetings I have with professors, just to talk, or the fact that after so many years of so many activities, half the administration knows who I am.
Maybe it’s because new building are springing up, buildings that, though I think won’t see much use from the general population, make Portland feel more like a college campus, and make Gorham look even more like one.
Bailey Hall now has a café – a real, coffee-shop-feeling café with high tables along a full wall of windows. Perhaps that one small thing is what did it for me.
What about the fact that I have regular conversations with the Portland cafeteria staff -Andy who makes the best sandwiches ever (and sometimes remembers that I don’t like pickles) and Meghan who will only tell you her second job if she really likes you (I wont share it here).
USM finally feels like a university to me, not just the place I go to take classes and see friends.
It was an odd transition. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it was just the woman smiling to me in the elevator.
But I like it.
Sarah Trent
Executive Editor