Conversation 30

Listen to a conversation between two university students.

Lil: Hey- welcome back!

Forrest: Hi, Lil.

L: How was your holiday? Did you go home?

F: Yeah. How about you?

L: No! It was Spring Break- I went to Fort Lauderdale. I love it there during Spring Break.

F: Oh, yeah- I see you got a tan. How was it? Isn’t it awful crowded there?

L: Yep- that’s what’s so great about it- it’s one big crowded party. It’s a blast!

F: Who’d you go with?

L: My roommate, and two other girls in the dorm. We drove down. One of them has a car. It’s a real old clunker, but it got us there and back OK.

F: Where’d you stay? In the car? I hear rooms are impossible to get down there during Break.

L: No- we just found a Motel Six up the coast about twenty miles and stayed there. Then we drove down to Lauderdale in the morning and back at night. You can park anywhere along the beach. The only problem was choosing our, um, designated driver each time. Nobody wanted the job.

F: I guess not! What’d you do, rotate?

L: We tried to, but my roommate met a guy she liked, and she kind of dropped out of the schedule, you know. And then one afternoon we all got separated. When we finally met up back at the car, it was ‘way past midnight, and nobody was in any condition to drive. So we just stayed there all night and danced on the beach.

F: Sounds like you had fun. Nobody got in trouble?

L: Well, we didn’t. The police had their hands full, though- like they do every year, I guess. There’s always somebody who ends up drunk and disorderly.

F: Yeah. And what about your assignment for this class? Did you get it done?

L: I did. I wrote it in the car on the way back yesterday.

F: In the car?! With three tired, sunburnt, giddy girls?

L: Yup. They did all the driving, and I sat in the back and wrote. That was the deal I made with my roomie- I told her I’d go if she’d promise me at least, at least two or three hours to myself to get my work done.

F: That was “time to yourself”?

L: Yeah, I had the whole back seat. (laughs)

F: (laughs) But what about your research, your, uh, references? I don’t suppose you had a library in the back seat, did you?

L: (laughs) Yeah- it was a bookmobile. (laughs) No, I got an early start. I did my research before I left and then took a bunch of notes with me. And I carried along a couple of the, uh, most important reference books.

F: How’d your paper come out? OK?

L: Pretty good, if I do say so myself. I’m pretty happy with it. I had to go to the library last night to pick up a couple of missing, you know, citations, but that didn’t take long. And I got it typed up and printed out this morning.

F: Hot off the presses, eh?

L: Yep. Just in time. How’s yours?

F: Yeah, I’m happy with mine, too. I tried to get it done at home- I wasn’t gallivanting around like you were- but my folks always had something they wanted me to do. Dad wanted me to come down to the shop and look at the new equipment he installed. Or, uh, Mom’d ask me to go into the garden and pick spinach or something for dinner or come with her to say “hello” to the neighbors or something.

L: Family can keep your hopping. Sounds about like my folks, too. I probably got more rest in Lauderdale than I would’ve at home.

F: (laughs) I don’t think so!

L: I got my paper written, didn’t I?

F: Yeah, OK. Point taken. And then, and then, my brother and his family showed up, and it turned into a grand reunion. So I didn’t get as much done as I thought I could.

L: Too bad.

F: So then I came back here a day early and spent it in the library stacks wrapping things up. That was nice. It was real quiet around here. The stacks were empty, so I could really concentrate. Nobody to bother me.

L: Who’d bother you, anyway?

F: Well, no one to chat with, I mean. I tend to, uh, get into conversations a lot when I should be studying.

L: Probably an avoidance reaction.

F: What’s that, your psychology again?

L: Almost. Animal behavior. We’re just animals, you know, and we usually behave like them.

F: Yeah, social animals

L: Well, we’d better stop socializing. Here comes the Prof.