Nighttime on the quad

I was up late one night grading and decided to take a look at the classlist to see if anyone else was awake. To my surprise, at two o'clock more than a dozen of my students had the green dots indicating they were logged on to our learning management system. It could be that they did not log out when they finished earlier in the evening, and even if active they could have been in another course offering.

In my sleepy haze I had a vision of another place and time, where we were all together in a small, residential college located in a rural area. In my vision I was up late grading (of course) and decided to take a walk through the college quad. I looked up at the dorms to see several lights on in windows, and I wondered if those students were studying, socializing, or had left the lights on when they fell asleep.