Sometime during my break from schooling, the language lab at Michigan State University was moved from Wells Hall to the Old Horticulture Building. They created a whole new lab, with study nooks and new tape players and televisions and all kinds of goodness. They also added a computer lab to it, in anticipation of the audio and video moving to a digital format.

The old language lab, which is part of a cluster of rooms that make up the computer lab section of Wells Hall, was completely abandoned. The tape players are still here, unused, in each booth. While the lab rooms are tiered like a lecture hall, they’re still much smaller than this language lab space. So, for years, the lights in the lab area have remained off; the booths unused.

When I returned to school, and got my work laptop, I moved from using the computer labs on campus (an amazing, but often-ignored resource) to finding places that were laptop-friendly. The nearby International Center has a library that has plenty of hookups for power and ethernet, as well as newly-installed wireless access. Unfortunately, that library is often closed for classes. Any of the other available areas are out of my way when I only have classes in this area.

So, in my investigations, I found that before its demise, the old language lab had been wired with power and ethernet jacks, probably as part of the defunct movement to have every entering student own a mandatory laptop. In fact, most of the campus areas that are filled with power and ethernet jacks were constructed at about that time.

Unfortunately, the old language lab in Wells Hall had no chairs. Booths, power, ethernet, and plenty of elbow-room, but no chairs. I made a half-hearted attempt at finding who I should contact to fill this place with chairs and turn it into a laptop lab. (Right next to the computer lab rooms – makes sense, right?) I got the run-around, and dropped the project fairly quickly.

Then, while having printing problems from the lab in the Old Horticulture Building, I happened to get my old boss from SNS on the phone. We chatted, caught up, and I told her about my idea. Turns out, she’d had the same idea, but couldn’t really move forward without student interest. So, I officially expressed my interest. :)

Here I sit, in the old language lab, with the lights on and several chairs around (which is about all Wells Hall can handle, it seems), and three booths down from me someone else is using it for the same purpose. I guess I wasn’t the only one.

Little triumphs are so satisfying.