“I Don’t Live in a Bubble!” Student Tweets from Mansueto

By Sam Nitkin

Dec. 5, 2018

At 12:38 p.m. on Wednesday, November 27, first-year student Katherine Blake tweeted to her 891 followers, “I don’t live in a bubble!” from the interior of the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library Reading Room. Katherine, originally from Los Angeles, California, was using Twitter to procrastinate on doing her “Earth as a Planet” problem set. Katherine had chosen Mansueto because the glass dome provided warmth and protection from the thirty-five-degree weather outside.

Katherine, who has never been south of 61st Street, followed up by tweeting, “Things get real on the south side of Chicago. Don’t @ me.” 

When asked to clarify, Katherine told the Shady Dealer, “I saw a homeless man walking along the Midway yesterday. I just feel that I’m getting an experience that my friends who go to UCLA don’t. I’m growing as a person by being here.” 

Katherine then asked the Dealer if the interview could be continued indoors, as she had lost her Canada Goose jacket at a frat party the night before and had never experienced this kind of cold.

Upon further investigation, the Dealer can confidently report that the homeless man Katherine reported seeing was actually a Cobb Coffee shop employee. The employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Dealer he was “honored by the ambiguity in his outfit.”

Katherine describes herself as a “woke bae” in her Twitter bio. The tweet currently has four likes and one retweet.