A Field Guide to the Sleepers of Davis Library
A taxonomy of finals-week sleep, compiled on the fourth floor with all due tenderness.
Field notes compiled over one December reading period, floors two through eight. Observer: caffeinated. Method: looking up from my own flashcards more often than was strictly useful.
THE UPRIGHT NODDER (somnus verticalis). Most abundant. Field marks: spine still committed to studying, head making slow pilgrimages toward the desk and back. Habitat: fourth-floor carrels, two to four p.m. The Nodder believes it is awake. Its highlighter, uncapped in its hand, believes otherwise. Approach quietly; the species startles easily and will immediately pretend to read.
THE FULL SURRENDER (somnus totalis). Rarer, more moving. Identified by a cheek laid flat against an open textbook — often, in my observations, organic chemistry, as though proximity might work where consciousness failed. The Surrender has stopped negotiating. The body lies across the notes like a paperweight, guarding what it could not absorb.
THE COCOONER (somnus larvatus). Hood up, arms withdrawn into sleeves, chair tipped to its one load-bearing angle. Found near heating vents and the softer chairs on eight. The Cocooner has planned this. Do not wake it; it has an alarm and a system.
THE OPTIMIST (somnus crastinus). Pen still upright in hand. Notebook open to a page that reads, in its entirety, "Ch. 12 —". The Optimist fell asleep mid-intention, and its face keeps the intention's shape.
A note on conservation: it has become fashionable to photograph the sleepers, and I would like to argue against this. Consider instead what you are looking at. Every one of these bodies is doing invisible work — somewhere under each hood, a brain is sorting the day, deciding what to keep, walking back through the stacks of itself and shelving things. Sleep is not the opposite of studying. Sleep is the part where the studying takes.
So regard the sleepers of Davis with the courtesy we extend to any creature caught doing something necessary and undignified. Lower your voice. Return your chair without scraping. And if you find, some gray December afternoon, a girl on the fourth floor with her cheek on a psychology textbook and a flashcard stuck faintly to her arm — that one is mine. I mean that one is me. Let her sleep. She is filing. She will wake at 4:40, confused and somehow readier, and she will glance around to see whether anyone was watching over her. Someone usually is. In my experience, in this library, someone usually is.