most startling remark overheard on the St. John’s campus

“I never check my St. John’s email account.”

It doesn’t seem like an email sort of place, and we didn’t have accounts when I was there.

Otherwise, the fragments of conversation I overheard sounded the same as 20 years ago. The students even sort of look the same. However, the campus felt a lot less crowded than I remembered it. It almost felt a bit deserted. But I think my sense of crowdedness has simply been recalibrated by a decade in Egypt, with the result that all American gatherings now feel a bit depopulated by comparison.