Ode to the Lake in October

It’s late again in the Information Commons. Screens dim their glow as they run out of battery — papers half-finished and eyes glazed over. Apple pencils stop cooperating on half-asleep iPads, hum of keyboards and quiet sighs blend into the kind of silence only somberness knows. 

Caffeine stopped working, motivation has stopped pretending and everyone’s just running on the dull rhythm of survival. 

Assignments pile up like the laundry from two weeks ago. Sakai sends announcements of impending deadlines and Outlook refuses to sit still. Every group chat is an orchestrated choir of “it’s getting done tomorrow.” Tomorrow keeps moving further away. The guilt sits heavier than the drop in bank account after buying textbooks. 

October has a way of stretching and distorting time — every minute is borrowed.

Some wander outside to breathe. Out past the glow of Cudahy Library, past the smell of espresso and anxiety, the lake awaits. Cold air bites at skin, but the wind carries a kind of honesty the stuffy, quiet third floor of the IC doesn’t. 

The lake doesn’t ask for anything nor does it scold for missing work or skipping long passages of readings. It seems to desire admiration. The waves crash against the rocks signaling that they’ve seen this struggle before — decades of students pacing the same shoreline, all trying to outstudy exhaustion — all failing. 

There’s a strange comfort in how the water keeps moving. The sound of the waves forgives procrastination and turns it into a pause instead of defeat. For a split second, sitting near the lake feels like breathing without apologizing for making a heavy grunt. 

Everyone’s tired and pretending not to be. Smiles in passing, dark circles under the eyes and shoulders heavy with unspoken panic, October turns fatigue into performative endurance. Yet, the lake breaks the fourth wall, takes all the pressure and cradles it, then spreads it thin across the horizon until it feels manageable again. 

Inside, the IC will always buzz with half-hearted efforts to complete undesired coursework when all their hearts may want is to recite poetry. But outside, the lake doesn’t measure time, effort or passion. The water rolls in and out, unconcerned with productivity. 

Balance toils somewhere between the deadlines and the mismatched waves. Maybe that’s why so many find their way to the shore when it gets too much — not to escape, but rather to remember a body can rest. The brain can stop racing for a second. 

That this too shall pass. 

The laundry and the half-finished papers and the incorrect balanced equations will be fixed soon. 

Soon enough, the water will freeze, and the rocks will grow slick and empty. But for now, the lake stays open, patient and a witness to everyone trying and failing only to try again. October knows what it means to keep moving through the cold.