On The Library (During Spring Break).
This year is the first time in my college career that I am staying in my school’s city over a break, specifically Spring Break. There is no particular reason or incentive for doing this, but my dad is in Mexico on vacation at the moment and I have an apartment here, so why the hell not, right? Today I decided on a whim to visit the main university library to scope out how many other people are sticking around and do some leisure reading there. Yes, I visit the library for fun. I get it, I’m a nerd.
Be that as it may, this particular library is usually - nay, always - packed to capacity during the semester with students who are diligently working, students who are pretending to be diligently working, and students who are unashamedly on their laptops just playing Farmville. This is a reality I found difficult to adjust to after being at a small university where hardly anyone ever studied in the library (meaning that if you were at the library, you could always find a great unoccupied study space). Because it can be difficult to find an open table, my friends and I tend to tackle the situation with a slight degree of stealth and deception.
The first person to arrive at the library for the evening does some reconnaissance work to find a table in a good location being occupied by only one person. They go up to that person and ask if they can sit at the table, acting as if they will be alone the entire time. Then the next person comes to the library after getting a text message from the first person with instructions on how to find the table in question, and pretends they weren’t expecting to see the first person there (i.e., “what a coincidence meeting you here”, etc.). After this, the power balance of the table’s ownership shifts to us, since we now have two people sitting at the table, whereas the other person who was there first is alone. Gradually, everyone else in our entourage who was planning to study in the library that evening shows up, until the table is occupied entirely by us.
But I digress. Walking through this library during the middle of the day during a school break was almost creepy in a way, like being in one of the episodes of The Twilight Zone where the protagonist is wondering through a desolate landscape. I first ventured up to the second floor and sat down by the giant windows that look out towards the lake (a table by the window is prime “real estate” when the library is crowded). I read a little bit of my book, but found it hard to concentrate, as the only other people on the floor were a couple of girls who were talking rather loudly. Fair enough, I thought, since this was the “open” study area where people could normally talk as loud as they wanted. I headed for the second floor study room that was designated as “quiet.” Again, I sat down by the windows so I could look out upon the recently-thawed lake with reverence. There were a few people sitting by themselves at different tables, all right next to the windows (see, what did I say about prime real estate?), and almost everyone was respecting the rules of the quiet study room, which is to say, they were being quiet. Except for the guy sitting right behind me. About five minutes after I sat down and opened my book, he began mumbling to himself while looking at some flashcards.
You know those hypothetical calculations people do that show the percentages of how much of each ethnicity, sex, etc. there would be if the world’s total population was reduced to 100? I have a feeling if the same math was applied to the library population, say, if there were only ten people in the library, nine out of ten would be considerate of the people around them while they studied. The tenth person is an asshole who doesn’t show any concern for those around him or her, and so they blast the music running through their earphones, yell at their friends across the room, or just whisper to themselves in a room where even the faintest sound is deafening, like this guy was. Am I overreacting? Maybe so, but I feel that the point of a university library is to be able to study without any distractions whatsoever. Because I’m passive-aggressive, though, I simply packed up my things for the second time and headed for the third floor quiet study room, where I finally found the peace and quiet I was looking for.
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