There is nothing quite different about the lobby. I think at one point there were tables that Drew and I would sit at and split a Dr. Pepper and chicken soup with tons of crackers while we ran lines. But otherwise, 10 years later, it is the same. 

Oh, the students have changed of course. I, now a professor, sit with them and may look like them slightly but I am no longer one of them. Which is nice and also sad as most beautiful things in life are.
When I was a student. There was a girl I would see every morning walking through the lobby on her way to the art department. She was covered in paint and wearing work boots, carrying a canvas satchel. Nothing extraordinary about her truly except her hair came down to her low back and was wavy. In the morning light the red gold russet mass almost glittered like a pre-raphelite painting and her face matched with the nobility and androgyny of a master’s paintbrush. She looked exactly like an angel to me. And perhaps she was, gliding through the stone lobby catching rainbows in her hair all tied up in a bandana. 
I can picture myself on that first Friday in May when it was so beautiful out and we had nothing to do after theatre history so Drew and I decided to drive to Gettysburg, which I had never been too and subsequently loved. I can, so truly, see the view of the outside world beyond the doors. The breeze in the trees across the street and the sunshine laying on the paving stones. It was a moment of pure bliss because anything seemed possible and we chose correctly that day on what to do with the perfection that had been given to us after a long winter.
That is what I remember about the lobby though there are other moments, shining seashells of moments caught in my net like memory. Singing for Ryan’s final project, taking pictures with Mitchel and Rich after senior ceremony. Meeting friends and family after a show. Working in the concert hall with my box office shirt on (what was too big for me). Many, many lovely things. And If I don’t sit and write them down, I will forget and they will be gone. Gemstones no more, but costume jewelry. And lost among the rest of the childhood magic.