If McKeldin Library is your favorite place to study on the campus, it’s probably your favorite place to take a shit too.

We all know the routine: Hit the books, hit the coffee shop, hit the bathroom. Luckily for their innumerable patrons, the bathrooms in McKeldin (all seven floors of them) are top-tier toilets. Sure, they’re not as comfortable as your bathroom at home or as familiar as the dorm stalls that fall victim to late-night excursions, but they do have a distinct advantage: hella reading material.

But it’s not the thousands (millions?) of books lining the library’s shelves that students can read while on the porcelain throne. It’s something far more interesting and, at times, well-written: bathroom graffiti.

Of course, those scrawled messages, written by the witty constipated for the witty constipated, have a bad reputation — largely because they’re rarely actually witty. But while the grocery stores and gas stations of the world might be home to some extremely questionable bathroom art, surely McKeldin Library, home to the university’s most scholarly students, is different?

Right?

Well, uh, yes and no. The graffiti in the library’s many restrooms is as diverse as the students who use them. The notes, scratched and drawn onto the dark-blue stalls, can be as vulgar and rude as one would expect a college student with a Sharpie and an ego to be, but they can also be remarkably poignant and downright poetic.

“We could be HEROES,” a large bright-red quote in the first-floor men’s room reminds any toilet-strapped student who glances to their right.

But a quick look up reveals a slightly less inspiring message.

“I’ve got the weiner [sic] rot,” the ghost of a former occupant confesses.

These two types of graffiti appear again and again in McKeldin’s multitude of bathrooms. On the fifth floor, messages include humblebrags such as “I smoked weed everyday since the 8th grade and I’m an engineer” (to which someone responded “you’re cool”) as well as serious musings on the importance of learning.

“DON’T LET SCHOOL GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR EDUCATION,” a warning scratched into stall plastic reads.

Some toilets are covered in interesting tidbits, and some contain no graffiti at all (or, worse yet, just scummy reminders that “16’s legal in M.D.”). But when you do find a piece that’s exciting, profound or just awesomely vulgar, it can be a transcendental experience. You’re no longer just escaping studying for a few minutes or relieving yourself of that dining hall food from earlier; you’re part of something bigger. You become part of history — a history of the people whose bare asses sat on that very same seat. And when the last sexual proposition has been rubbed off the stalls, you can be sure that someone else will one day be offering “BJs for ‘str8’ guys.”

Whether it’s classic restroom questions like “Can I fuck your girlfriend?” or misguided advice like “Save the Planet… Don’t Flush” (attributed to “Bernie 2016,” of course), the bathroom graffiti of McKeldin does, at the very least, give you something to read. There’s no need to bring an iPad or check Twitter for the millionth time while you do your business — just take a look around.

You might find something pretty amazing.