Leaving the Whitney building, many student’s press their hands against the tall, clear sheet of glass. The first cold, crisp, fall air of the year blows into many faces. A student walks down the OCC campus quad to sit on a brown, round picnic table that looks like wood but is really made of plastic.
The sound of a roaring machine in the distance echoes from one of the buildings nearby. Looking up towards the sky, a white seagull soars into the gloomy, dark clouds above with a sliver of sunlight peering through. Branches of trees whipping back and forth, and the leaves ever so gently follow.
A man appears swiftly running up to the student and asks anxiously, “Where’s this building?” He points to a sheet of smooth, white paper with black letters that spelled out the word “Coulter Library.” The student sitting on the brown picnic table responds back to the man with support, “Coulter Library is past the bridge off to your left.”
As the man steadily moves quickly in the right direction towards his destination, a gust of robust wind blows in the other direction. Laughter is heard in the distance from two young female students walking side by side.
“Click, Click, Click,” a female student, whose hair is braided and dark, walks by with black high heels on her feet. The sound of faint coughing is heard across the quad as a young man stands covering his mouth on the steps of the Whitney building.
“Your f****** lucky, that boy’s gonna have problems when he’s older,” said an African American woman walking across the quad with a pink-haired female.
Two male students walk by wearing shorts, tank tops, flip-flops, and PUMA sandals with socks, in 59-degree weather. Sunglasses sit over the eyes of a student with no sun ahead in sight.
“Clap, Clap, Clap,” as students walk up the steps into the Whitney building. Birds chirp on branches that line the campus quad. The Gordon Student Center door squeaks as if it is only opened slightly. A male student walks by with his head down, his lips puckered outwards, studying intensely as he flips the pages to his notebook.
“SSSSHHH” is the sound the leaves make on the trees like they are dancing. Three leaves flip, like pinwheels following behind one another in single file across the cement ground. A girl wears a red bandana wrapped around her head with her hair pulled tightly back in a bun. Her hair style appears to look like the straw of the caramel Starbucks drink in her hand.
“If I text him, I’m going to have research reports coming back to me,” said the familiar African American woman who passed by, again, with her friend.
The student at the brown picnic table looks up from writing, ready to go back inside to the warm classroom. She stands up and proudly sees the American flag off in the distance waving back.
Suddenly, a plane flies over the flag pole and it looks like a dot on top of the pole, reading the letter “i.” Ironically, the student walks to class and glances over at the bulletin board seeing a sign that reads, “Be an I.” Now that is a sign.
If you pay attention, details paint a picture.
News Writing, Onondaga Community College 2017
SIMPLELANE.LIFE 