Don't Dump (Coffee) in the Water Fountains, Please

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the foyer of Wescoe Hall at the University of Kansas, waiting for a meeting with my academic adviser. I seated myself in one of three chairs across from a water fountain and vending machine, just a few steps to the left of her office. 

For those that don't know, Wescoe Hall, for all it's accomplishments in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Department, is kinda KU's biggest eyesore on campus. It's one of those buildings that you might mistake for a parking garage. And if you did, no harm no foul. It was a parking garage converted into a Lecture Hall. Yes, at a Division One, Big 12 University. I repeat: the flagship university of the state of Kansas uses a former parking garage to teach the humanities. I thought, maybe, that sequence of events took place vice versa, but what the hell do I know? I'm no architect. 

Being a potential English major and all, you can't but help hearing that "the humanities are down", but a parking garage? Times are tougher than even I could have guessed.

So, there I waited. 5 minutes turned into 10, 10 into 15.

Every now and then, just to kill a little time, I pull out my little notepad out of my drawstring bag and jot down whatever comes to mind. It could be something brilliant or trivial. It's usually the latter. 

Anyways, this little activity helps to keep my mind engaged, giving me the illusion that I'm not being stood-up or ignored. It never changes the fact that I'm possibly being stood-up or ignored, but hey, it's all about how the brain perceives it, right?

(This adviser would never do that, though. She just has a million things to do every day, and I'm just one of them. She is amazing, truly.)

On this particular Tuesday, like a lot of days in the day in the life, not much was going on upstairs in the old noggin. I remembered a few classes that I took in that building, but aside from that, my brain was in complete staycation mode (this is often what state my brain goes into before, during, and immediately after meeting with an academic adviser while we attempt to map out my future).

Fine. I'll just sit back and veg and see if anything hits me right upside instead, I thought.

And that's when a neon orange sign with black lettering introduced itself to me: "Don't Dump Coffee in the Water Fountains, Please."