As dusk begins to fall, most students start to head back to their dorms and apartments. Professors start heading home; clubs finish up their meetings and classes come to their conclusion. But at 5:30, shortly after the dorms start their dinner, Andrew Martinez shows up on campus for work.

Martinez is a second-year psychology student, taking classes at both UCLA and Santa Monica College. He decided to go back to school at the age of 27 and took a job as a janitor at night so he could attend full-time during the year.

“I wanted to do something that was going to help further (full-time attendance) along, and it’s a full-time job,” Martinez said.

Martinez sweeps and mops the floors, dusts the work areas, takes out trash and cleans bathrooms. He maintains the corridors, secures the building at night and reports any leaks or problems.

Before heading to southwest campus to speak with Martinez at his workplace in Warren Hall during finals week of Session C, I ventured onto campus in the evening. I had been on campus that late before. But this time, I paid close attention to the vast amount of activity that goes on.

Maintenance staff entered buildings with large pipes and cumbersome equipment.

The emergency aid helicopter landed at the hospital.

People waited in the emergency room, and families gathered at the waiting area near the main entrance.

At the hospital, “Nothing stops. Ever,” said Verkin Jansezian, the night house and nursing supervisor at the UCLA Medical Center.

The hospital has a night capacity of 600 patients, and on a given night, it usually holds around 475 to 535.

During the night, the hospital maintains the same size nursing staff as it does during the day, with between 200 and 300 nurses on duty, Jansezian said.

There are also doctors both physically present and on call.

The rest of the campus is also busy.

There are about 250 custodians working every night on campus from 5:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. and close to 400 on the maintenance staff total, said Jack Powazek, assistant vice chancellor of general services. Many of those are also craft employees, including plumbers and electricians.

In addition, certain construction projects, roadwork and street cleaning get done at night, Powazek said. Facilities Maintenance always has people on duty.

“Even at midnight on a holiday we always have a few people here,” he said.

For most of Martinez’s colleagues, work on the custodial staff is another much-needed source of income.

“For a lot of people, this is their second job,” he said. “Mostly because of the benefits.”

Much of the custodial staff has been here for a long time, Martinez said. For many, it is their first experience with a 401k and health insurance, he said.

Martinez makes about $10 an hour, a slight pay increase over daytime work of a similar nature. This is not enough to support himself through school, so he relies on financial aid to fill in the gaps.

Though one of many who labor at night on UCLA’s campus, Martinez is in many ways unique. He sees the cutting-edge science that makes up his physical surroundings as he works as an opportunity to learn, and he discusses the projects with researchers he comes across. At one point he introduced me to two researchers when one needed to borrow equipment. The researchers had worked in the same building for years but never met.

“I interact with the graduate students and researchers; it’s an interesting community at night,” he said. “It’s been exciting.”

The very places that we as undergraduates and professors see as our lecture halls, labs and offices are the workplaces of others as well. But it seems as though these worlds rarely intersect.

As I went farther into campus, I came across some more custodial staff. I stopped one to inquire why she worked at night. She couldn’t talk because, well, it was her lunch break and she was hungry. For some, when it is 9:30 at night it means the day is ending. But for others, it’s lunch time.

Contact Mishory at jmishory@media.ucla.edu.