Hoover Tower, Stanford’s North Star, is probably the most recognizable landmark on campus. Yet somehow, it was week eight of winter quarter and I had never been inside.

As someone who biked past the tower almost every morning, this felt strangely inexcusable. So I created a plan to visit. I romantically envisioned visiting at sunrise to see the blue-purplish skies stretching over campus. It would feel surreal and warm. Then I looked up the operating hours.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

My peak study time. For most of this quarter, I’ve been in CoDa during those hours, sometimes not even leaving for lunch. How was I meant to find time to visit Hoover Tower? To make matters worse, the last elevator went up at 3:30 p.m., meaning I would have to get there even earlier.

For an entire week, I tried to find the motivation to go. I told myself to close my laptop, put my work aside and just walk over. But every day, I found an excuse.

I had too much work.

I didn’t want to go alone, and my sister was always too busy.

Every time I got close, I would glance at the clock: 3:45. Welp. No way of going up now. Maybe tomorrow.

But this column had made me more self-aware. Was I really too busy to spare fifteen minutes? Or had I just gotten comfortable postponing activities that weren’t graded or scheduled?

So one day, I stopped negotiating with myself.

I closed my laptop, walked out of Green Library and crossed the street. Within five minutes, I was standing in front of Hoover Tower.

Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

I showed my student ID. Boom. Ticket secured, I took my place in line. The elevator filled quickly, bodies pressing shoulder to shoulder, until it seemed full. Then someone called out, “Space for one more.” I slipped inside just as the doors closed, and we began the slow climb up thirteen floors.

As we rose, the elevator operator told us the story of the tower, commissioned by Herbert Hoover, who used to be just another Stanford student walking these paths and sitting in lecture halls. I found this thought funny and comforting — so many big names and faces were once students like me. During his speech, the operator emphasized that Hoover was the only Stanford student to have become president.

He nudged me and joked, “You could be next.”

I laughed and brushed it off. But for a split second, I quieted the self-deprecating internal monologue. I let myself consider what I might be capable of.

Then the doors opened.

The brisk air hit me first. The sky was exactly as I had imagined: soft blues surrounding hills that stretched endlessly in every direction. It was beautiful, yes. But what surprised me wasn’t the horizon. It was looking down.

Encina Hall stood below, stunning from above — so different from the building I rushed into every week for CS109 section. To the left was Memorial Auditorium sitting in front of the beautiful Tanner Fountain roundabout. I kept turning. Main Quad. Meyer Green. Green Library. If I squinted, I could see people enjoying lunch at Coupa Café, unaware I was standing thirteen floors above them.

Towards the back, another shock. The Dish. I thought about my sunrise hike and realized these weren’t isolated adventures. They were pieces of the same campus, the same life. The places I treated as occasional escapes were actually part of my everyday surroundings.

From thirteen floors up, everything was different. The bikes speeding down Jane Stanford Way looked like ants. The campus felt serene, almost untouched by urgency. The same arcades I power-walked through daily, anxious about being late to MATH104 and PWR, now looked calm and timeless.

Ironically, I had to look through bars to see it all, but I had never felt freer.

I took a few minutes to just stand there and appreciate it — the people around me, the campus beneath me, and my wonderful life here.

And suddenly, it hit me: I was here. At Stanford. Stanford.

Tourists travel across the world to walk these paths, to take photos of the very buildings I speed past with headphones in. They scour every inch of campus, trying to soak it in. And I — someone who lives here — forgot to look.

How ignorant I had been.

Stanford is more than grades and classes and networking events. It is hills and fountains and sandstone arches glowing in the afternoon light. It is history stacked beneath our sneakers. It is a haven filled with friends who have slowly become family.

When I look past the late study nights and momentary stress, I don’t feel overwhelmed. 

I feel safe.

Hoover Tower didn’t change my schedule. It didn’t reduce my workload. And it sure didn’t create more hours in the day. But it proved that fifteen minutes existed if I chose them.