I don't know why I'm in love with my dorm lobby. Actually, I must clarify, I'm in love with a very specific corner of the lobby, second nook from the door, adjacent to the cafe and directly across from the open air staircase leading down to the dining hall.

In case you were wondering, my dorm is actually a converted Renaissance hotel that serves as a student residence during the school year. The amenities are disgustingly luxurious. Marble floors, chandeliers, private bathrooms in every room and queen sized beds, just to name a few of the perks. However I have recently found myself foregoing the confines of my fifth floor living quarters, a space most university students would kill for, for the much more public and exposed lobby.

It all began about a week ago when my two good friends proposed that we study in the games room, a semi separate enclave branching off from the lobby. While I was not at a loss for productivity, I found the lighting too dim and the close knit band of Turkish pool hustlers non conducive to true academic success, so I quit the booths of what during the summer constitutes the hotel bar and grill for the bright lights and comfortable couches of New Residence Hall lobby.

Having been a regular for some time at the late night dessert/coffee counter, I decided to set up camp close by should I surrender to my insatiable appetite for cheesecake. Legs splayed across the love seat, I began to subconsciously assess my surroundings. The lighting is soft enough to hide minor dermatological imperfections, yet strong enough to take the strain off my tired eyes. The afore mentioned proximity to the cafe is highly convenient, and much to my delight there is a recessed outlet in the floor for my laptop. Combined with the fireplace/wall partition combo and the occasional child prodigy coaxing soft beautiful music from the refurbished piano, this nook was shaping up to be my new favorite hangout.

Perhaps the greatest feature of my newly colonized study area is the ability to people watch. By and large the crowd is pretty mundane, students heading down to the caf for lunch, disgruntled maintenance people, etc. However, late at night, when the veneer of studious workmanship begins to crack, things get much more entertaining. People on study breaks start cranking up hip hop tunes, bored cafe attendants congregate like moths to a flame, and the stoners who speckle the perimeter of the building stumble in, simultaneously confused and relieved to be out of the cold. There are also many couples who treat the the regal looking lobby chairs and the circle they form as if they were in the intimate privacy of a far removed woodland cabin.

All of these wonderful attributes come together to form the perfect breeding ground for creative writing. As entries such as these manifest themselves in my mind, I begin to regain my old swagger of intellectual fortitude that carried me through high school, a confidence that has been greatly shaken since my arrival to Montreal. Being surrounded by people on the same intellectual wavelength as myself in a city where being bilingual is a given has been a sincerely humbling experience, and finding a haven in my own home is helping to bring a sense of normalcy to my otherwise unpredictable routine.