I like to think of myself as someone who understands rhythm. I write about love like it’s a language, like everything has meaning if you listen closely enough. Lyrics stick with me after one listen of the song. Honestly, entire songs live in my head rent-free.
And yet, in the last exam I took, I skipped an entire question because I couldn’t figure out how to spell a single word. This is coming from the English double major, by the way (the word was literally “video”, do not ask me why).
So, maybe this isn’t about intelligence. Maybe it’s about location. That’s what I’ve been telling myself, at least.
1. My Living Room.
There is truly a softness to my living room, just when no one else in the building is awake.
It almost feels poetic: the sunlight slipping in, everything quiet enough to pretend I’m about to become someone disciplined. It adds to the illusion. I even open my laptop like it means something. Rearranging tabs, telling myself I’m “starting soon.”
I am not starting soon.
If you see me through the window during the day, just know I am not doing work. I’m curating my life instead of living it. Pinterest boards, playlists I won’t actually study to, aesthetic versions of productivity that stop right before effort begins.
It’s peaceful. It’s dangerous. It’s not productive.
Rating: 2/10, generously.
2. First floor of The Library (with friends, of course).
This one is social productivity, which is really just productivity’s cousin who shows up but doesn’t help. We sit there with laptops open like we’re going to lock in. Sometimes we do, but just briefly.
Mostly, it turns into interruptions that don’t feel like interruptions because everyone is in the same half-focused state. A sentence turns into a conversation. A conversation turns into nothing in particular.
We all stay, though. That’s the strange part. It seems like being near work is close enough to doing it.
Rating: 4/10, briefly convincing.
3. Same Library, just downstairs.
This space feels heavier and quieter. It feels like it’s asking something of me.
And sometimes, I answer. If I’m alone and if I’m in the right mood, I put my headphones on—classical, instrumental, anything without words really—and suddenly the stars align, and I am a weapon.
Which is ironic, considering how much I love the lyrical aspect of music. How easily I memorize them. How songs usually carry me throughout my days.
But here, words get in the way. In the library, I need silence shaped like music.
Other times here, I don’t work at all. I just sleep. Not a nap, a full disappearance from responsibility.
There is genuinely no in-between. I do not study here anymore for reference.
Rating: 6/10, high risk or high reward?
4. The Education Lounge.
BOOYAH! I don’t know what happens here, and I am not asking questions.
Something about this space makes me feel sharp, like everything clicks into place once I sit down and put the big uncomfortable pillow behind my back (if you have been there, you know). I’m not distracted by the poetry of everything else. I’m just doing my work, which is almost annoying.
It’s not romantic or aesthetic, but it works. Just quiet competence for a few hours before I become myself again.
I leave and don’t really know how I did it.
Rating: 10/10, terrifying, honestly.
I don’t know what the pattern is, if there even is one. I move between places, hoping something sticks. Or, at least, maybe one of them will eventually make things easier about getting older and growing up.
Most days, it doesn’t. I just get better at recognizing where I am not working.