The above quote is from Robert L. Friend, M.D. (Class of 1968). Read the full memory below:

I started at Brown as a beenied member of the class of 1968 in 1964 and soon made the Rock my home. I remember studying at a carrel in the stacks with a view of the street. I spent more time there my freshman year than anywhere else as I buried myself and my fear in the comfort of books and solitude. I may have seemed like a bold, brash New Yorker to my room-mates at Archibald, but I was terrified inside. I also remember the time I made a discovery that has frequently been relevant to me as I work with teenagers as an adolescent psychiatrist. That discovery had to do with the way in which nearly anything can become fascinating, absorbing, and distracting when there is work and a deadline to be avoided. I was studying for some exam or other and found myself captivated by a book in the stacks near me. I was drawn to it as if it were the secret of life or a guide to sexual satisfaction…It was a book on census data from the early 18th century of the Pennsylvania Dutch counties! I was mesmerized and remember telling myself that this data was “really interesting.” It came to me in a flash that, no, this data was not really interesting but that the interesting thing was how I could possibly think that! A mind defensively seeking an avoiding distraction will stop at nothing, even census data from a long past century. As parents tell me about how they forbid their kids to use video games, phones, ipads etc. when exams loom in order to “protect” them from distraction I think to myself that what they really have to look out for is that fascinating census tract data.

The above quote is from Sally Sevcik (Class of 1967). Read the full memory below:

I was a student when the Rock first opened. Everyone was checking it out and debating about the design. One of the first days it was open I went with three friends. While we were riding the elevator one friend said that if you jump while the elevator is going down it feels like flying. So we did. All four of us at once. It did feel a little like flying but when we landed the elevator stopped–between floors. It took a couple of hours before we were liberated. We sat on the floor, talked, told jokes, and enjoyed our holiday from whatever we were supposed to be doing in the library.

The above quote is from Tom Parr (Grad School 1966). Read the full memory below:

The Rock and it’s stairwells were apparently built with a new technology of the day in mind – the perfect place to test super balls, They bounced so well that one could, with good aim, throw a ball from the top floor all the way down to the bottom and have it bounce off multiple walls before successfully returning to the top – a favorite study break for a number of BPOC members in the mid-’60s.

The above quote is from Karen Brecher Alschuler (Class of 1967). Read the full memory below:

November 9, 1965… I was sitting in one of those wonderful carrels looking over Providence when everything went black! We knew right away that it was the whole City that had been affected since we saw the City lights go out. We did not yet know it was the whole East Coast.

The few of us on that floor called out to each other, held hands as we snaked our way down the stairs and out the door—let go and went our separate ways!

Only one of innumerable evenings spent at The Rock from its opening when we were Sophomores through to graduation. Those were the days when you could wander the stacks of a great library unhindered.

 

The above quote is from Patricia Truman (Class of 1970). Read the full memory below:

1. As a bright-eyed freshman in 1966, I loved going to the Rock. But I sure wasn’t used to such a big building! I came from a small high school in Connecticut with a one-room library! I had a favorite carrel in the third-floor stacks. One night I scurried down a stairwell from the third to the first level and emerged BEHIND the Circulation Desk. The young man working Circulation grinned widely and decided I was pretty goofy to get so lost! Several months later after many study sessions in the second floor study room, the main one adjacent to the break room, he taught me words like “callipygian” (blush) and introduced me to the tunes he loved from Broadway musicals. The day before I graduated in 1970, I married that young man (Don Olowinski ’69)!

2. Driving from Boston to Cranston over the 2013 holidays and feeling pretty overwhelmed by family issues, I decided to cheer myself up by calling the Rock to see if I could visit and work from there. Yes! Even though it was holiday break, the Rock was indeed open! I set up my remote “office” in the second floor study room (now a computer lab!) and did my editor work for my Boise, ID, company for several hours. Very peaceful. Very surreal to be there again. Very wonderful.

The above quote is from Edith A Tobin (Class of 1976). Read the full memory below:

I remember the enormous chocolate chip cookies the library sold in their snack bar. They got me through every academic challenge.

Have a corgi today because I’d watch, from my carrel, an Egyptology professor, if memory serves, walk his 2 Corgis across the lawn . I’d be cramming & wishing I was out with them.

The above quote is from Sandy McDougall (Class of 1977). Read the full memory below:

Hot cider and the most fabulous memorable molasses cookies in the coffee room on those long winter nights.
Lively conversation in the coffee room to lighten the stress. Lots of buzz and laughter.
Leaving little love notes at my boyfriend’s (now husband’s ) carrel.
Finding love notes from my future husband at my carrel when I returned from breaks.
We rarely studied next to each other for some reason. We had our favorite areas.
Cool art exhibits in the glass cases in the front entrance space.
Rushing to finish note taking and studying and clear off my carrel and race downstairs before they locked the doors at 11:50 or 1:50 depending on the day.
The long snowy walks home late at night. Loved the long walks home on those magical spring nights.
Where as a social scientist, I fell in love with studying basic physics.
My home on most week nights from dinner at the Ratty to closing!

The above quote is from Tony Randazzo (Class of 1981). Read the full memory below:

1.) The nondescript cardboard box that was placed on the check-out counter to collect papers that had to be submitted each Tuesday by 6pm for Religious Studies 24(?) taught by Giles Milhaven. Just at the end of lecture at 2:30pm, Prof. Milhaven would pose a question and we’d have to submit a 2 to 3 page paper, with citations from the pertinent text, by that 6pm time. After 6, the box was gone. Pressure, pressure, pressure. I went to A level every Tuesday that term.
2.) B level. Reading period. Final exam prep. There would be a bit of a dash before 8am to lay claim to a carrel for the day. No windows, no distractions. Silence. It was grim, but effective, at least for me. I was particularly tortured by trying to translate “Wenn Wir Alle Engel Wären” for German 2 and it seemed like I had to translate every other word. For world class procrastinators like myself, B Level was the ultimate refuge for focus and concentration.
3.) One of the toilet paper dispensers in the Men’s room on the 2nd floor was labeled “Harvard Diplomas.” I still get a little kick out of that.
4.) Primal Screams on the front steps. A perfect setting.

The above quote is from an Anonymous Graduate (Class of 2013). Read the full memory below:

I have been to many libraries in my life, but nothing beats the Rock and AQR-by far, the best place to study. Library staff is super nice and, of course, I will never forget Free Pizza madness, Naked Donut Run, and the overall “Rock culture” in terms of the kinds of students who would mostly study there.

The above quote is from Phil Squattrito (Class of 1982). Read the full memory below:

I was a chemistry major, so most of my library memories center around the Sci Li, but I have one particular memory that involves the Rock. I was involved in a 3-way conversation with a classmate Dan Ladow ’82 and a female student whose name I don’t recall. She was going on about how she had all this reading on reserve at the Rock, including a book by some guy with a name she did not remember but approximated as Schlemiel. Through a little probing, Dan was able to establish that the author in question was the revered Arthur Schlesinger. When she asked who this Arthur Schlesinger was and why he was such a big deal, I chimed in “He writes reserve books for the Rock” upon which Dan promptly cracked up. A nice dry little moment and my main memory of the Rock, which I probably visited fewer than a half dozen times during my four years at Brown.