A Room of Their Own

U.S. News and World Report doesn’t rank lounges, but if they did, seventh-year chemistry grad student Timothy R. Dransfield thinks he knows who would be on top. “[The Harvard Department of Chemistry’s lounge] may very well be the best graduate student lounge in any chemistry department in the country,” Dransfield says. A large, colorful, metal-heavy room with with a pool table that students call “the center,” the new lounge in Mallinckrodt Laboratory is the product of a joint faculty-student project (started partly because of the 1998 suicide of a grad student) to relieve the stress of the chem student’s life. “Students on the whole are pretty pleased,” Dransfield says. “It’s a much better space than we had before.”

The student-designed lounge provides a startling contrast with the labs that surround it. The butterscotch walls and open seating area give the room a clean, modern feel; any feng shui expert would marvel at the telescope lens-like smooth geometry of the furniture. Swirly silver light fixtures hang from the ceilings, above a black tiled floor with a green, pink and yellow confetti pattern. On the right is a kitchen, replete with refrigerator, sink, microwave, wood cabinets, a Poland Spring water cooler and a bar-style seating area with funky wood and red fabric stools. In the main lounge area are two couches, some tables, three computers, a circle of swiveling easy chairs, a pool table and a giant-screen TV. The center seems ripe for a party. “The center puts student social life in the center of the department, both literally and figuratively, and that’s a good thing,” Dransfield says.

But on a weekday afternoon last week, it is awfully quiet. The pool table is covered in a black sheet. The swivel chairs face away from the center of the circle. Two TFs correct Chem 20 problem sets. A few students study on the couches. One overheard cell phone conversation: “Try raising it to the second power, and then the third and so on...” A glance into the kitchen reveals empty bar chairs and empty cupboards. Not a single drawer or cabinet is in use. A huge wall that could be used for postering has only one sign on it, advertising an upcoming play at Dudley House. The Poland Spring jug is empty. The freezer has bags of ice and two lonely containers of sherbet. Hungry grad students would fare no better in a fridge raid. The massive fridge’s shelves contain nothing except two half-empty Sprite bottles and a huge bowl of coffee creamers ready to fill the coffee cups of stressed graduate students. “Some people might like to add a coffee machine—and a piano to replace the one we had to give back,” Dransfield says.

The only place that’s hopping here is the computer cubicles—all three are occupied. These study cubes are a cut above the wooden chair and desk set that comes with an undergrad room. Fax machines, iMacs and sleek silver chairs exemplify the center’s melding of science, design and overworked grad students. Though the lounge may be dead on weekday afternoons, the place becomes popular around 5 or 6 p.m., reports first-year graduate student Michael Fuerstman, who is studying physical chemistry. Fuerstman says he hits the center at least once a day and thinks the lounge is an important hangout for chem grad students. “There is usually someone on the pool table [after 5] and sometimes there’s even a line,” he says. Post-doctoral fellow Jiade Yang reports that he works in the lab for 10 hours every day. He says he likes to go to the lounge “once a week” to unwind.

During the Olympic hockey finals, almost all the graduate students came to the center to watch the U.S. play Russia and Canada, according to Fuerstman. “It was really cool to see everyone,” he says. “I think [the center] helped bring our class together, especially in the first semester.”

Whether used as a daytime study spot or as an after-hours hangout, the lounge has already played a role in normalizing the stressful academic lives of these aspiring scientists—to whatever extent that is possible. “People have used the space for birthday parties and for thesis defense parties,” Dransfield says.