Every now and again I miss life on campus. Then I recall that life on campus is a heady mix of dreadful dullness, punctuated by moments of excruciating boredom.

That being said, there are occasions when life in Rains seems genuinely appealing (unlike life in Escondido Village, which is just unpleasant). Take, for example, last Thursday.

What happened last Thursday? Well, The 750 got a pool table.

Now, I know that at first glance that doesn’t appear to be much. There are, after all, pool tables elsewhere. Many of them, in fact. You would be entirely justified in thinking that one has to lead a pretty tragic life to be excited by the velvety caress of soft felt, the rigid hardness of a solid cue and the silken smoothness of well polished balls.

However, the point is not the pool table, it’s The 750. Or rather the potential of The 750.

I’ve done some shilling for the place already (though I should make it clear that I’m no Armstrong Williams), but that was over the summer, so I thought we should revisit the issue.

Despite the fact our very own bar has been open for a while, it appears that it’s not quite doing the roaring trade one might expect.

Why?

Well, if one were naive (by naive, I mean undergraduate), one might think that it’s because the graduate student population is a little, well, limp.

However, we know we don’t just flop around doing mundane, everyday tasks. I’ve seen you people sack work to go party and get horribly drunk — my adviser should note, though, that obviously I’ve never done that, and it really did take me a week to find that minus sign.

If not dysfunction, then what prevents the crowds from flocking? I’ve spent enough time in the bars of Palo Alto (yes, there is more than one) to know that there’s no conglomeration of grad students there. No, it’s not better options that keep us away.

I suspect that, in reality, the problem is somewhat subtler in origin. You see, I don’t think we understand the point of a student bar.

Such places don’t exist on the same plane as the sort of debonair drinking dens you might find yourself daydreaming about when stuck in the dusty corner of your department library. It’s not a place to dress up for, or a place to bump and grind with potential mates.

Rather than a Nola’s or an F&A’s, the perfect student bar should be a Cheers. It should be somewhere where everyone (or at least several people) knows your name.

There’s an occasional tendency to believe that going out should always be Going Out. I suspect it comes from the fact that life as a graduate student can be so bereft of anything resembling social activity that when free time presents itself we want to make the most of it.

The problem with this idea, though, is that options for Going Out tend to be somewhat limited if one doesn’t spend at least a little time going out.

There’s surprisingly little in the way of broader community, the kind of community where you know people you haven’t seen across a lab bench, at Stanford, especially amongst the graduate students. We stick in our little groups and cliques, rarely venturing beyond to see what else is out there.

Of course, venturing out is hard; as charmingly awful as they are, the GSC parties aren’t really conducive to anything other than gentle sobbing at the state of your life, and that never made anyone new friends.

In fact, most opportunities to meet people outside your department carry the same unpleasant sense of being forced. They’re all that sort of uncomfortable social mixer that leaves an unpleasant stench of desperation on everyone, despite the best intentions of the organizers and guests.

Which brings us back to The 750. And its pool table. You see, this place of ours carries none of that uncomfortable baggage. It’s somewhere to hang out, to grab a drink before turning in for the evening or to pick up a late night snack before heading back to the lab.

I know that there are better bars to pick up boys. There are better bars to dance the night away and better bars to order the perfect martini. But maybe a few games of pool with real people will help you upgrade those imaginary friends.

Hey 750 folks, I better get a free beer for this. The rest of you, don’t bother e-mailing (navins@stanford.edu, if you must), instead come and have a drink with me on Thursday night. I’m usually there by 10:30 p.m.