My favorite library on campus is McCabe. I remember when I first arrived at Swarthmore as a freshman, I had never stepped foot on campus. One of my classmates motioned over in the direction of the big block-shaped behemoth and pointed out how that was our main library. I remember feeling completely shocked. First, my high school did not have much of a library. It was more of a back room with some couches and shelves. It felt sleepy and wasn’t frequented by many students. McCabe was probably 50 times the size of my library, and I was so excited to explore its hallways and all that it had to offer.

Over the course of my first semester, I would always study on the second floor of McCabe. The basement was a little too quiet; the first floor was a little too busy. The second floor was just right. However, during that semester I was always so confused whenever I entered McCabe. I always thought the building was much bigger than it looked from the outside. I didn’t think anything of it until the second semester of freshman year when I realized that there was a third floor! I had never looked to the right when I ascended to the second floor and thus was completely unaware of the third floor! In light of this, when I became co-president of the international club here, I made sure that the incoming freshman had a clear idea of what our main library had to offer.

I organized a McCabe hide-and-seek game for the freshman at dusk. We had one of the McCabe student employees give an introduction to the library and what it had to offer by way of research, reserve items, and more. Then we turned off all the lights and had the freshman play a large scale game of hide-and-seek on all the floors of the library. It was great fun and I promise you that after that event, no international student in the class of 2020 was unaware of the floor plan of McCabe like I once was.