When we get back to the campus, I watch him walk slowly down the hall to his sunlit, wood-paneled office on the second floor of Margaret Jacks Hall. I walk up the carpeted staircase to the fourth floor, where I share a common area with four other grad students. The room has an open ceiling with wooden beams suspending fluorescent-light assemblies. Cheesy, maroon-carpeted cube dividers cut up the territory. Power and Ethernet cables have been strewn all over the floor and over the walls of the cubes.
Broken workstations sit on the floor.
People are writing text and coding virtually any time of the day or night. I never have the place to myself, and I rarely talk to anyone. There isn't time. You constantly have to remind yourself that you're at the top of the pyramid. Lots of people would like to be here - and you are.