Before embarking on my trip through the Arbor walkway, I complete the ritual phone, wallet, keys pat-down, with my own additions: headphones, Spotify queue, slight look of urgency and annoyance. I’ll do anything to avoid a student with a clipboard and a 30-second spiel. How hypocritical I am.
Don’t I begin to feel a bit silly, walking down our busy stretch of campus, trying to walk faster to blend in with the large friend group in front of me? If you follow the coil of my earbuds down from my ears, you’ll find that they aren’t actually connected to anything, just an empty back pocket. Or maybe my phone is pressed against my cheek, and I’m faking a phone call, talking to nobody. A shortcut through the Girvetz Hall courtyard. A diversion behind South Hall. An impulsive pivot into the shaded pits in front of the library.
As is the case at many a college campus, the Arbor serves as UC Santa Barbara’s prime real estate for student organizations to throw QR codes and stickers in your face. It’s probably one of the only places where you can sign a petition to somehow save the oceans, commission a free poem from a bored English major at a picnic bench, argue with a random old man and his enigmatic poster board, buy a tasty baked good or get recruited by a pre-professional sorority with near-simultaneity.
“Are you a woman in S.T.E.M.?”
No, I’m a woman listening to A$AP Rocky at 9 a.m., walking really fast with my eyes fixed on the ground. And, you know what, I do feel a bit silly about it.
Tabling along the Arbor walkway is cognitive dissonance in its purest form.
I love to hate a tabler. I love to turn up my music (or pretend to) and pick up the pace, weaving through my peers in an unofficial race to the end of the walkway. That stretch of pavement has probably seen me at moments of peak athleticism.
It has also, however, seen me through many late mornings with handfuls of newspapers fresh off the press. QR codes for newsletters that I write and Instagram accounts that I run. Little trinkets for groups that I’m a part of. I am a tabler.
How hypocritical I am. Or, rather, was.
This past quarter, I’ve decided to commit to more of an effort to take an earbud out here and there. I know, I know, hold the applause. Maybe I’m fueled by the incentive of collecting free things — stickers, pins, pens, the occasional T-shirt — but at least I’ve stopped averting my eyes so quickly.
As a frequent victim of my own organizations’ Arbor tabling sign-up sheets, I can empathize with the tabler. More often than not, we’re in the same boat — rare is the student with a genuine passion for standing in the middle of campus’ busiest walkway, talking aimlessly at hangry students on their commute from the lecture hall to the library.
But hey, I see you. We see each other. May my polite eye contact serve as a sign for you to hit me with your elevator pitch and hand me your flyer. It’s a small price to pay in the hopes that, the next time the sign-up sheet makes its way back to me, the tabling experience will be a little less awkward and a little more engaging — you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours — because getting dissed by your own classmates and acquaintances is an embarrassing fate that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
“Are you a woman in S.T.E.M.?”
Well … sort of? Yeah, I guess I am. I’ll probably tell you that I’m after a Bachelor of Arts degree, but I’ve taken my fair share of chemistry and calculus, and I still dabble in science-heavy courses, so … yes? I don’t have the time or the passion to join your club, but I’ve got a minute or two before my next class that I can spend in the Arbor talking to you, because I’ve been there too, and I’ll probably be there again next week.