In the Robarts cafeteria. I feel like Indiana Jones, the academic. Everywhere I look I am met with the gaze of lovesick students… But I’m just trying to find a place to sit. Peering into the Starbucks nook, a head turns violently from her conversation, she’s still talking, and looking at me… it’s the same in the next room, as guarding the entrance, with one ear cocked to her table-mate, her eyes on me with my tray of sushi, is another woman.

In both rooms there aren’t any available seats, so I return to the cafeteria and find a spot by the window, in a place I have to squeeze myself violently to fit. I look across the room. There’s a girl sitting opposite me, and she’s staring at me.  But there’s no way around it: I know the next part is going to be ludicrous. I take my jacket off, haphazardly, and as best as I can, compress my body, one leg kicking over an empty chair, into the seat that in normal circumstances would be obviously too small for my six foot frame–and, during that struggling, the magic dissipates. I’m relieved, but also a bit sad, to see that the girl across the cafeteria spends the rest of our lunch “together” standing up and looking off to one side, talking on her cell phone.