Will’s View

Whilst walking through the hallowed courtyards of The University of Melbourne this evening, I was struck by the number of chalked advertisements on the pavement. Several of these span several square metres, and must have taken an army of volunteers quite some time to prepare. Given the University’s new push for its students to ‘dreamlarge’, I can somewhat understand this phenomenon.

But the thing that I was most struck by was my ability to tell which chalked arrows and hastily scrawled chalkings were still relevant. After so many years of wandering over freshly defaced courtyards, one gets to know the ‘look’ of a recent chalking: the chalk dust still settling on the paving stones; the vivid greens and blues still prominent; and the lack of chalky footprints leading away from it. I think one develops this skill out of necessity after turning up to a couple of free barbecues one or two days late, and then trying to cover up the fact you feel stupid by suddenly finding something fascinating and important to do, over there.

One cannot only tell the age of a chalking, but also the amount of enthusiasm used to generate it in the first place. Enthusiastic crowds will make sure the lines are clear, and the colours vivid. These groups usually have large amounts of labour to devote to this process too, which helps. The engineers, however, tend to have hurriedly fashioned chalkings, often with spelling or grammar mistakes. This, I believe, is due to their overwhelming desire to be somewhere else. Namely, the pub.

All in all, chalking is a necessary part of uni life, but I think I should really find a hobby.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 12:58 am and is filed under Purely Informative (hah). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.