Lydia Hill, BK ’21

I came to this library for attention, but I don’t actually have any work I need to do right now. Everyone else here may think I’m on my grind, but this is a blank word doc I’m working on. And this coffee cup is just warm milk. My friend told me the guy I made out with at Box last Saturday was here with some other guys on his team–one of whom I matched with on Tinder during Game Theory today–and I need them to see that I’m cute and smart and also have friends that do work in Starr. I’m that girl that can enter a shallow Dubra-induced coma at 4 a.m. Saturday morning and wake up 5 hours later to grind out a P-Set in CTL. Oh my god, I wish more hot guys studied in CTL. Really good visibility there.

I should go talk to Alyssa. Of course they’re checking her out. Must be great to be in 50 Most. I could ask her about the problem set for Game Theory? Wait, there’s no problem set this week. Maybe see if she wants to start studying for the midterm? Ooo, or I could ask her what her plans are for this weekend so they know I’m going out. Are we close enough for that?

We were definitely not close enough for that. Also what does she mean, “too much work to go out”? Girls with boyfriends are so boring. I would never let a guy determine how I act.

Oh shit, they’re packing up! Ugh, I should wait, like, 10 minutes and then leave so it’s not so obvious I was only here for Box guy. I guess I could just read Buzzfeed. Oh my god, they still haven’t found that little girl that went missing from that county fair in Maryland in 1998. That’s so sad, it would super suck to go missing. Ew, and they made one of those creepy aged-up photos of her. Do those even help? I feel like they all look like Sophia the AI robot. Actually… this one kind of looks like that girl from Game Theory section. What’s her name again? Claire? But I thought she was from Vermont. No, there’s no way. But wow it, like, really looks like her. I feel like she said she was adopted, but she had the strangest look on her face. And when we talked about that real world application of hostage negotiation she got this empty look in her eyes. It was as if she’d left her body for three minutes and came back to life right as we were packing up. I mean… even if this isn’t real, which it really seems like it might be, don’t I owe it to that little girl in the photo to do something about it?

Never mind, the crew team’s here. This “essay” is not going to write itself!

I Came to this Library for Attention was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.