How many times have you overheard, had a friend say to you, or said yourself, “I’m going to be living in the library tonight”? Sometimes it feels like along with your laptop, class notes, and cup of coffee, you might as well bring along a sleeping bag with you to Bapst or O’Neill. As the end of the semester approaches (I know, I know, I said it), you tend to find more people sleeping than studying at their desks and people leaving their textbooks open on library tables to save their seats, making it look like they went to the bathroom, when they actually went to Hillside. The vending machines start slowly running out of Diet Coke, the paper towel dispensers run out by 3 p.m., and we all start to forget what the insides of our eyelids look like.
I started noticing what the library actually looks like during high-stress times in the semester, and sometimes, it honestly doesn’t look too different from my living room. For those of you who spent more time in a straight back chair than in your bed this semester, this article is for you. For those of you who haven’t, take note: it’s coming.
You’ll know that time of year has come when your Sunday morning starts by deciding to go to the library. You’re feeling productive, so you pack your bag and head over to main campus, only to realize that every seat in both libraries is taken. You’ve never seen any of these people before, either. You start to wonder if these people even go to BC. You pace around every floor of every library, becoming increasingly aware that you’ve passed the same spots more than once, and the people sitting there are starting to notice. But eventually, you find a sub-par seat and get to work.
As the days pass, you start getting to the library earlier and earlier so that eventually, you always get to your go-to seat before anyone else can. You have your roommates save desks for you. You stop bringing a bag of chips back from the dining hall and start bringing full meals directly to your desk. Eventually, the vending machine becomes your primary source of nutrition, and you end up deciding between Oreos or Cheez-Its for dinner.
The grocery store
You may also find that there are other people with the same habits as you. You see the same people in the areas you’re studying in, and you might even notice you have the same study patterns. You get up to take a break at the same time, you start scrolling through Facebook at the same time. But you never speak. You don’t ever acknowledge library “friends.”
Walking through the lobby past the computers, the printers and the stacks, more and more people are not studying at their desks.
You find people sitting at their cubicle with Netflix streaming, catching up on episodes of Breaking Bad and Gossip Girl.
More people have their head on their book than in their book, because they’re napping.
The library also becomes a highly social place, as opposed to a quite study space. Friends forget how to whisper, people forget to put their phones on silent, and some even listen to music without headphones on (believe me, I’ve heard it).
Social media also changes dramatically. Within a few days, posts transition from cute Instagrams of the last party you went to, to what your desks look like with books piling up. Tweets shift from witty comments about how great college is, to how stressed and exhausted you are. Facebook events dwindle, albums to stalk are few and far between, and status updates are asking if anyone has a charger on campus they can borrow, or if anyone has notes they can borrow for classes they’ve never been to.
People start using their procrastination time wisely by teaching themselves some new tricks. You figure out what all the keyboard controls are for your laptop, and you finally get around to downloading remote printing. You might even discover that you don’t have to miss a second of reading when you figure out you don’t have to hold your water bottle to drink out of it.
You might even find yourself going to the library in between classes or before club meetings, but you don’t really have anything you actually need to work on.
Library living is a fad that comes and goes once or twice a semester. Some of us embrace it, some of us loath it, and I’m sure less people than I think even actually do it. It may be a little early to start moving into your favorite study spot. But believe me, sooner than you think, you’ll be trading in riding boots and blouses for sweatpants and messy buns.
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