The Library: Naps, Snacks, and an Unsightly Rash

Your university library is no doubt a magically cozy haven of quiet studiousness . Maybe you call it the lib. Or perhaps the ‘brary. You might even refer to it as that overheated hellhole that you avoid like the plague until the week of finals, when you camp out there hunching over textbooks with your neck cramping. Either way, it’s a difficult place to avoid for four years of schooling, so we thought we’d provide a list of fun activities you can try (besides writing essays and scrolling though Facebook) to break the monotony. Try this!

• Nap on comfortable couches and chairs. Truly commit: set an alarm, lie down, and pass out. Why walk all the way back to your dorm to sleep when there’s a perfectly good quiet room to snooze in?
• Awaken from said nap overheated and confused, but overall triumphant. Ignore lingering glances from neighbors. You look great when you fist wake up.
• Eat pretzels and hummus.
• Regret eating pretzels and hummus. (Have I always been such a loud chewer?)
• Buy oversized chocolate chip cookies from the cafe.
• Lament over your lack of dining dollars with which to buy oversized chocolate chip cookies from the cafe.
• Make weird faces at your friend in the quiet room.
• Make weird faces at strangers in the quiet room.
•  Wander aisles aimlessly, pretending to look for a book.
• Check compulsively about whether or not your music can be heard through your headphones.
• Loudly rip a piece of paper from your notebook in the tense silence of a quiet room. When someone looks at you judgingly, shush them harshly. SHHH.
• Chug an entire bottle of water, then go to the bathroom every 20 minutes for the next two hours. (You won’t regret this one, I swear.)

One piece of advice I have for you is this: don’t classically condition yourself to depend on certain snacks while you work. Last fall, my mom was awesome enough to buy me a rather large box of individually packaged fruit snacks. (My mom’s been asking for a shout out on here. I don’t think it occurred to her that only about twelve people will probably read this. Hi, Mom.) Each time I went to the library, I’d bring a pack of fruit snacks to reward myself for being such a studious student as to study for hours on end at the library. I’m about to read four chapters from a book called Functional Anatomy of Speech, Language, and Hearing? Go me! Take a bag of fruit snacks, I’ve earned it. Hell, maybe two. A few weeks later, my stash ran dry, and I was at a loss. What motivation did I have to drag my laptop and books across campus to work if I wouldn’t be able to eat 12-15 tiny, chewy strawberries? Surely my grades would plummet! They didn’t, however, and I survived a short withdrawal period (increased irritability, drops in blood sugar, an unsightly rash.) And I somehow managed to keep trekking back to my familiar corner of the ‘brary.

   Just some light reading