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5:45 a.m.
A handful of athletes have left the building and are on their way to practice in the dark. Four swimmers are the first out the door, followed soon by cross-country’s Abbey Brende, a first-year student. Brende said she’s up for early workout six days a week and, sometimes, will put in up to 10 miles before breakfast.

6:30 a.m.
Campus Safety Officer Raymond Watts is on the tail end of his overnight shift. It’s been quiet, he says, aside from some students who came in late after the Bucs’ Monday Night Football game. Watts, who in a previous career was an NYPD officer and detective, says he’s seen some crazy “college stuff” in the year and a half he’s worked at UTampa, but Mondays are usually uneventful. “They take a rest on Mondays,” he says.

6:59 a.m.
Stacey Hoffmeister, a senior psychology major, is tucked in a booth near Starbucks. She is working on a paper for her sexual harassment seminar class, something that’s worth “a pretty hefty chunk” of her grade, she says. She lives off-campus, and her first class isn’t until 10 a.m. Her roommate marvels at her early start, she says, but mornings are when she’s most productive. Plus, “it’s nice that I can come to campus and have a nice place to sit,” she says. “It used to be hard to find somewhere to study.”

7:09 a.m.
Nick Larkin from Beck, the company that built the Grand Center, and an air conditioning foreman walk through the lobby on their way to grab a ladder to complete “punch out” items for the building. Today’s list includes some drywall finishing, duct work in a laundry room and painting, “stuff we can’t do during the day because it gets too busy,” Larkin says.

7:17 a.m.
First-year student and Grand Center resident Charlotte Hendra is studying for her chemistry midterm in the Sky Park. She’s been at it since 4 a.m., she says — not her usual study pattern. “I’ve just been procrastinating, and I need to pass the class,” she says. “In my room, I know I’m just going to lay on my bed and go on my phone. Out here, it’s pretty, like, seeing the sunrise. And also, I can focus here.”

7:35 a.m.
Sunrise.

7:40 a.m.

The music is pumping from Starbucks as Richard Greenway and his two colleagues get ready to open. “Twenty-four hours in the Grand Center, huh?” he says. “Well, some of the kids spend 23 hours right here.” He says the mobile orders can get excessive with all the syrups and options. His own go-to is a black red-eye, just a cup of black coffee with a shot — of espresso, not bourbon, he says.

8:00 a.m.
In room 125, Associate Professor Giuseppina Holway is teaching UTSOC 222: Tampa Bay as a Sociological Laboratory, with 25 students in attendance. The day’s lecture topic is demography, and Holway reminds the students that demographers are interested in population size, distribution and composition, with each of these being impacted by fertility, mortality and migration patterns (easily remembered as “sex, death and travel,” she says.) She asks, “How is demography relevant to your anticipated career?” A student says she wants to be a high school teacher. Holway suggests that finding a teaching job near The Villages might be harder than somewhere else, based on the age demographics of the area. Another wants to open an eco-friendly swimwear company. They discuss how a coastal area with a younger demographic would make sense. “Do your research,” she tells the students.

9:48 a.m.
This might be the world’s busiest Starbucks.

10:00 a.m.
In the Grand Center parking garage, Cooper Silver, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship, and his buddy, senior Rowan Miller, have a few minutes before they go to a Zumba class. Silver has charged his new-to-him, white-with-black-interior Tesla Model 3 (to the tune of about $3 paid in an app) while he and Miller were in their first class this morning, ENT 420: Managing the Startup Venture.

10:30 a.m.
Seniors Aaliyah Elwood (left) and Bryann Beneby are working the front desk in the International Programs Office on the ground floor. Both are international students themselves, Elwood from Jamaica and Beneby from the Bahamas. It’s slow this morning, but they say a couple of dozen students will come through in a typical day, and more around the time that study-abroad applications are due. The office also assists foreign students with adjusting to life in the U.S. Elwood recalls helping a student who was waiting for her Social Security number. “I was just guiding her through the process, reassuring her on what to do and having her keep us updated to ensure that it gets resolved,” she says.

10:55 a.m.
Technicians are on the 10th floor, working on two of the building's four elevators. 

11-11:15 a.m.
Forty-nine people go up in Elevators 1 and 2 and sometimes Elevator 3. Thirty-nine come down.

11:15-11:30 a.m.
Elevator 4 intermittently opens its door like it’s ready to take people upstairs. But this is a tease.

11:45-Noon
Sixty-eight people go up, mostly in Elevators 1 and 2, sometimes 3. Sixty-seven come down.

12:06 p.m.
A dozen students eat lunch, talk quietly and work on homework while sitting on the plush chairs and couches in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lounge. Junior Joshua Donophan (left), a peer mentor, is preparing for a first-generation student event while ODEI assistant and communication student Tyler Kerr (right) is planning for Sister to Sister’s “De-stress and Reset” event while enjoying a KitKat. Her friend, fellow ODEI assistant and biology major Marie Williams, works on homework. “It’s been hard for the diverse community to find a specific space for us to all hang out. And this is something I know students have been able to utilize,” says Williams.

1:05 p.m.
Chris Haight sits in a break-out room in the Southard Institute for Sales Excellence. A business value leader with Oracle Corporation, he’s been coming to campus twice a week to help students with their sales pitches before an international sales competition in Orlando. The competing groups are given case studies, and each student must craft different pitches to hypothetically sell a product, so advice from executive coaches like Haight is crucial. “The students are fantastic, second to none,” he says.

2:07 p.m.
Karly Taylor, the area coordinator for the Grand Center, is in her office on the sixth floor. Area coordinators are full-time staff members who live in the residence halls, sometimes with their families. For Taylor, that’s her boyfriend and her 3-year-old Chihuahua mix, Max. Taylor describes her experience working and living with first-year students as “often bittersweet,” recalling experiences like move-in day, when families drop off their children. “I do not take it lightly,” she says.

3:04 p.m.
In the student veterans lounge, junior Dylan Miller (left) is working on an accounting assignment due today and is getting a jump start on one for economics that’s due tomorrow. The former Air Force medical technician says he does his work in the lounge sometimes before class, but other times, he will work on projects late into the night. Students can scan into the first-floor space 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so “the hours are pretty good,” he says. Meanwhile, junior Vanessa Contreras (right), who separated from the Marine Corps in July, said the lounge offers a safe space for student veterans, who oftentimes “were distanced from civilians, especially when just transitioning.” She says she’s been coming to the lounge twice a week, every week, and she’s met some of her friends here. “If I need someone to talk to, there are plenty of people here who will understand,” she says.

4:15 p.m.
Potted plants are being staged in the lobby, and there is a low hum of commotion as members from the Office of Development and University Relations set up for the Grand Center’s grand opening ceremony at the end of the week. In a first-floor office, Project Manager Jason Baranec is at his desk. Floor plans are scattered across the desk, and seven large paintings are stacked against the wall. “This is my temporary office, which also turns into a storage room on occasion, as you can see,” he says. Some days, he says, you might find him offering cookies to families waiting in line for elevators, like he did on move-in day, but he’s also the person who oversees the building’s work orders. Short lists of tweaks to be completed over winter break are on a large white board on his office wall. Before long, he’s called away by the Development team — he needs to help move couches.

5:10 p.m.
Tucked in a back corner on the first floor is room 157, a lactation room for nursing mothers. There is a comfy chair and a side table, and a sink is nestled in a bank of cabinets along the back wall. A mini fridge, presumably for storing breast milk, holds a clamshell with leftovers from the cafe and an open, mini can of Dr. Pepper.

5:25 p.m.
Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of marketing, is wrapping up some last-minute notes in his office before he teaches a 6 p.m. global marketing course. His office in the Grand Center sits in a hallway behind Starbucks, so the smell of coffee wafts through his door all day. “I’ve gone twice already,” he laughs, pointing to the remains of his venti beverage in his trash can. A Walmart grocery delivery man wanders down the hall, asking for assistance in Spanish. Anderson responds to the guy in Portuguese (of which he’s conversational) and Spanish, reading the delivery notes on his phone. Anderson calls the student, who lives on the fifth floor, letting them know to meet the delivery man downstairs.

6 p.m.
Evening classes begin, including World Religions, taught by Jennifer Battaglia, part-time philosophy and religion faculty. An Indian song plays in the background as students prepare to take notes on Sikhism. Shazam says the song is “Ab Chal Nagar Govind Guru Ka” by Bhai Davinder Singh Sodhi, a Sikh artist. A timeline on the white board, ranging from 25000 BCE to 1500 CE, shows the history of religion in India leading up to the founding of Sikhism. When Battaglia, who teaches barefoot, asks the class who has heard of Sikhism, one student raises their hand.

6:53 p.m.
Sunset. Other campus buildings block a western view from the Sky Park. On the east side, however, clouds change colors over the downtown skyline and the Hillsborough River. The string lights over the Sky Park turn on, creating a romantic ambience for studying for midterms.

7:07 p.m.
First-year students Justin Young, an accounting major, and Lucas Raymond, an entrepreneurship major, start a game of bags (or corn hole) in the Sky Park. Their friend Louis Gallipoli is waiting to play the winner. “What a shot!” Young exclaims, as a bag teeters on the board and slowly falls down the hole. Raymond’s next shot is an air ball, flying several feet over the board. A couple rounds later, they debate whether Young’s shot went in or went over. (It totally went over.) Three students walk by rolling hampers to the laundry room. The guys tell them that most of the machines on that side of the floor are broken after too many amateurs used too many scent beads in their loads.

7:40 p.m.
Did someone say “world’s busiest Starbucks”?

8 p.m.
The rumor was that “the girls on the ninth floor are always baking,” but that proves untrue tonight. Nothing is happening in the ninth-floor kitchen. The fridge and cabinets are empty except for a can of nonstick cooking spray. A single rotini noodle shrivels on a counter.

8:15 p.m.
Spooky music can be faintly heard from the Ars Sonora Halloween Concert in Sykes Plaza.

9 p.m.
The laundry room is bumpin’. Rapidly wrinkling loads of clean clothes sit finished yet untouched on top of the dryers. Both laundry rooms have plenty of machines for chore nights like tonight, with 24 washers and 24 dryers between the two. They all look to be working fine.

10 p.m.
Fifteen RAs attend the weekly meeting of the Grand Center’s resident advisors. The meeting begins with a belated birthday celebration, complete with cookie cake, brownies, and thick, iced sugar cookies from the grocery that shouldn’t be as good as they are. The group discusses using ChatGPT to write a proposal to get the RAs special parking passes. Area Coordinator Karly Taylor announces that the cam-pus-wide Resident Feedback Survey opened yesterday and will run through the next two weeks. No pressure, but the RA who gets the highest engagement on the survey wins Crumbl Cookies for their entire floor. The group is told there will be a fire drill next week, but, shhhhhh, don’t tell the residents.

11:45 p.m.
Sophomores Julia DiFranco and Avery Brown are wrapping up their four-hour RA desk shift on the sixth floor. A few students are hanging around, joking with them, but they soon move on. DiFranco and Brown say the care aspect of being an RA appeals to them. “I just love that older sister or mom-like role,” Brown says. “Like those boys right now. I just love being able to have fun and support them in whatever their journey is.” At midnight, they close the information desk and do rounds of every level in the residence hall. A noise complaint has come in from the ninth floor, but when they get there, all is quiet. Or, at least, quiet enough.

12:10 a.m.
In the common area on the ninth floor, the game is Texas Hold ’em. A group of card players is around a table, chips stacked high. They’ve been here for a few hours, they say, an almost-nightly occurrence. They also say that no real money is at stake, and, “of course,” their homework is done. “We do this later, like, after classes, after we take care of our responsibilities,” says first-year student David Sardella. Tonight, the vibe is pretty laid back, but the students say the games can get intense. Sometimes, there are spectators. “They look at us like we’re zoo animals,” says sophomore Straton Larsen.

12:22 a.m.
Suitemates Zack Clark and Ethan Colley, first-year students, are in the 10th-floor common space, watching hockey highlights on the big screen. Colley’s Discover UT water bottle is on the table. He was one of about 60 students to participate in the leadership-focused orientation program last August. He says having been part of Discover UT should “open up an easier pathway” to a minor in leadership, which he’s considering. The pair spend a lot of time in the lounge, they say, usually late in the evening, and then Clark realizes the time. He has an 8 a.m. class on Wednesdays. “I should probably get to bed soon,” he says.

1 a.m.
“You learn pretty quickly that people either stay up ’til  4 a.m. or go to bed at 10,” says sophomore Steve Ifantis, an RA on the sixth floor. Ifantis is usually in the 10 p.m. camp, but tonight, he’s doing laundry and offers a look at his room while his sheets and towels spin. Like all RAs, he has a single room, and he lucked into one with a small kitchen. He demonstrates his induction cooktop, which he says is mostly used for grilled cheese sandwiches, but he also has prepared grilled chicken for himself. He wants to cook a steak, but he hasn’t yet. “Beef is really expensive,” he says.

1:44 a.m.
Three students are in the Sky Park, taking in the bright city lights. One is talking on the phone and occasionally bursts out laughing. Another is scrolling. The third appears to be studying, her headphones on, intently working on a laptop. Two of the three are wearing red plaid pajama pants.

2:06 a.m.
Rosario Rivera, on the night cleaning crew, is almost done with her shift. She’s been sweeping up the day’s mess since 6 p.m. “There’s a lot of traffic here,” she says. “It’s a 24/7 building. It keeps me on my toes.” 

2:16 a.m.
Some of the poker bros leave the building.

2:18 a.m.
A student comes into the lobby barefoot. A campus safety officer asks him to put on his shoes in the building. He’s just finished playing beach volleyball, the student says.

2:29 a.m.
Another student dressed in shorts and a T-shirt comes in from outside and enters Elevator 3. His shoes have sand on them.

3:47 a.m.
The student who was talking and laughing on her phone in the Sky Park is still there, still talking, still laughing.

3:51 a.m.
Three first-year suitemates, all studying for different classes (biology, business calculus and ethics), are pulling an all-nighter in the seventh-floor study cube. Alicia Poschke, Sandra Velednitskiy and Lia Malka have eaten all the chicken spring rolls, but the rest of their study snacks are still plentiful: Trader Joe’s Scandinavian Swimmers gummy candies, French onion dip, a whole bin of chips, and Celsius energy drinks will keep them going until daybreak.

4:17 a.m.
The Sky Park is empty.

4:20 a.m.
One lap around the sixth floor is .12 miles and takes 2:51 minutes at a moderate walking pace.

4-something a.m.
A sleepy-looking student comes out of Elevator 2 and walks quickly across the lobby and out the side door. Then another. Asked where he’s going, the second student says, without switching his gaze from focused on the exit, “On a run.” Once the door shuts behind him, a campus safety officer says, “They’re not going on a run. They’re off to do fraternity stuff.”

5:10 a.m.
The ROTC cadets who live in the Grand Center start assembling downstairs. Most of them are dressed in black, and all wear reflective belts. At 5:20 a.m. sharp, they’ll head out together to the lacrosse field for PT, as they do every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Some days they do a Cross Fit-like workout. On running days, their route takes them from the lacrosse field, across the bridge and down the Riverwalk. They loop it back at the USF bull statue, a round trip of more than 3 miles.

6 a.m.
It’s still dark when one Journal staffer leaves the lobby, headed to her car and home for a nap.