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Walking into McAfee is like walking into the freshman dorms at Hogwarts or the school in Ender’s Game. Everyone there really has no idea what they’re doing yet, but they’re figuring it out together, and eventually they will do something with their lives. They’re also loud. Way too loud.
What’s wrong with them? Freshmen are all so full of life, smiling everywhere they go, talking to people. They’re all still extroverted, like I and so many of my peers were, once upon a time.
(Yes, I am aware that this article has a “Get off my lawn” vibe, but I’m gonna embrace that.)
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Everyone in McAfee is slap-happy. Things are just funnier in McAfee, and the worst of disputes between friends can be solved over a game of ping pong. It’s this weird, utopian oasis on an otherwise fairly segregated campus: guys live in their buildings, ladies live in theirs, and you don’t see each other much outside of in class, in common areas or during open dorm hours. Sure, people do spend time with each other in the Bowld, Logos, and coffee shops, but they’re always doing something there.
“People come to the Bowld for a purpose,” said Josiah McGee, senior political science major. “It’s hard to slow down like you used to in McAfee. When you’re with people in the Bowld, it’s harder to forget about school.”
In McAfee, you’re just there. Maybe procrastinating, maybe bored, it doesn’t really matter which. All that matters is that you’re there with a bunch of other first year students who really don’t know what they’re doing. Once you’re a sophomore, you really aren’t allowed to say “I’m undeclared” anymore. Definitely not junior year, and by the time senior year rolls around, you had better have some post grad plans laid out, or risk feeling like a loser (soy un perdedor) for both of the remaining semesters.
Sure, for the upperclassmen, there’s the Bowld, but the Bowld is the equivalent of McAfee to upperclassmen only in the same way that Halo Top and Ben and Jerry’s are both ice cream: one is objectively superior, even though both are in the same family or genus. The Bowld is cold all the time, too sleek and clean to be comfortable. There are conference rooms, a sure sign that a building is for adults, those who have given up hope.
This bleak image is diametrically opposed to McAfee. There’s lots of soft yellow light in the freshmen commons, a homey, worn atmosphere and enough seats for everyone in the graduating class and their mother to take a load off for a second. The only bad thing about McAfee is the fear that you will walk upstairs and stumble upon two freshmen fully frenching on a faux leather couch.
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Everytime I come back to McAfee, I don’t fit in. Everyone there is happy, optimistic, not even sort of sick of school. This is not me saying that Union is a terrible school. Any school that I went to, I think I would be done by this point. Midway through my seventh semester––working on two theses, two jobs, a student leader in multiple organizations––anyone, anywhere, would be burnt out.
But McAfee is in the supernatural “Circle of Life” for a reason.
Freshmen are sleeping less, spending more time with friends and generally living a lot better than many upperclassmen, and the atmosphere of McAfee often shows that. There are students longboarding indoors, ugly mascots slobbering all over the place, people playing Smash Bros on the N64 and more.
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There’s an unexplainable factor to McAfee, and it’s not the smell of dog slobber, staleness and freshman hormones. Maybe it’s the people, and the consistency of them. David Bowman, junior business marketing major, knows the people of McAfee well, as he works the desk there.
“In about an hour, there will be a group of about five people that come in and sit at that table, and there will be a couple on that couch,” Bowman said.
Sandra Allen, freshman history major, said that she used to play pool with the same people every night at 9:30. And yeah, that’s weird, but don’t you wish you could do that? Play pool every night and not worry about what tomorrow brings? That is truly some Matthew 6:34 kind of stuff.
And apparently, the atmosphere is even more friendly now.
“It’s called Feast,” said Jacob Roessler, freshman math and economics double major. “It’s a huge potluck.”
Upperclassmen, freshmen and anyone else who wants to can come, bringing their food, drinks and spirits. (Spirits, as in the emotional kind, the one allowed at Union.)
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It’s not nostalgia, because the freshmen feel it now, not even one semester under their belts. So how are so many good memories tied to McAfee?
I remember Christmas with the Olivers every year, complete with hot chocolate, cookies and the joy of being recognized by someone who really doesn’t have any reason to know you outside of pure kindness and a desire to love people.
The only time I almost pulled an all-nighter (I stayed up until 4:30 and woke up at 6. Pro tip: Never pull an actual all-nighter, just get close) was on the second floor of McAfee until it closed, when we moved to Jennings. Freshman year, I didn’t care about coffee in the way I do now, and I remember bringing my Mr. Coffee upstairs along with a bag of Starbucks’ Espresso Roast, brewing coffee for hours for myself and others as we worked on a group project.
I made spaghetti once in the Bowld, just for myself and three friends. But then, people kept showing up. So I kept boiling more water, heating more sauce, browning more ground beef, until I had fed several dozen people, all of them joking, laughing and lounging around the space.
I talked to crushes in McAfee (including my now fiancee, Abbey Peecher), made friends and realized that I really didn’t want to be a part of several cliques on the first floor of McAfee.
I debated why geese are better than ducks, and I won.
I lost too many games of Catan to Luke Sower, Jon Hall, Brittany Staggs and Melissa Hall in that building.
Weezer has a song called “The Good Life” on their sophomore album. It’s about good times in the old days and wanting to return there. I listened to Weezer non-stop freshman year, so most of their songs have a certain nostalgic nature to them, but the lyrics in this one can really hit me emotionally:
It’s time I got back, it’s time I got back / And I don’t even know how I got off the track / I wanna go back / I wanna go back
Simple, but good, especially with the music.
It’s not just nostalgia for McAfee, or the fun times of Freshman year. It’s the midnight adventures to greasy 24 hour joints, all of the friends I’ve drifted apart from (especially the ones I thought I would never stop texting) and the non-complicated nature of friendships back then. I just got along with people, and stuff worked.
I just wanna go back to McAfee.
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