A Finals Season Guide To The Library

With finals season bearing down upon us, scores of Northwestern students will soon start their tri-annual pilgrimage to the book place for the fun sexi learning times.

Yes, it is time once again to prepare for the library to be full of sexually frustrated sophomores whose only goal in life is to take the study carrel that you’ve been using/peeing on for the last two years. This means a number of things – including that we really do need a “You Pee On It You Claim It” rule – but the most important takeaway is that we could all do with a refresher on what sort of actions are acceptable in each part of the library:

• Reference: Here you’ll find a nice mix of computers, books and desks, making Reference a good spot to use if you have a project to work on. You can go to a desk when you need to read without a computer, and move to more private locations in the back corners if you need to actually concentrate. Just remember that the whole thing is surrounded by windows so even when you think you have enough privacy in the back for some steamy OTPHJ action with your “study” partner, there will absolutely be a tour group walking by and watching and taking pictures and muploading and hashtagging and making you go viral. And isn’t the whole point of an OTPHJ to avoid getting anything viral?
  

  If you get muploaded by these people, you will get pregnant. And die.

• Core: Got a group project to work on? So does everybody else! So come on down to Core, located in the library’s Bumblefuck section, a convenient 10 minutes of meandering mindlessly from the entrance! Grab a table, plug in those laptops, fire up Photobooth and post the pics to Facebook so everyone can see how hard you’re working. Got group members who actually do shit? Put in those headphones, crank up the Avril, and ignore them! Core: It’s some seriously hardcore fun!
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• Periodicals: If you speak, I will hunt you down. I will find you. I will find your family. I will find your pets. I will find the girl you had a crush on in third grade. And I will end them all. While you watch… NAH JUST MESSIN, everyone talks even though the whole fucking point of this section is to be quiet for like two goddamn hours out of your fucking day.
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• The Towers: J.R.R Tolkien described these beasts best in The Two Towers, when he wrote “’We will have peace, when you and all your works have perished-and the works of your dark master to whom you would deliver us.” The Towers tempt students with the allure of privacy and quiet; yet those who enter are doomed to a night of depravity and procrastination.  You grab a study carrel, unpack your books and find yourself drawn to Facebook like an all-consuming piece of jewelry. Stuck in towers shaped like prisons, surrounded by rows of strange objects filled with paper and writing, with no others around to peer pressure you into doing your work, your sanity will be quick to go. Except for in 5E. Africa’s great.
  

  Looks an awful lot like 4S, huh?

• Info Commons: Time to gather round the printer and gossip! You know you’re not gonna get things done, but if you have a group project to work on, this is one of the better meeting places. Computers are plentiful, though often taken, and talking is actually allowed. Also, it’s close to the front door so you don’t have to do the moving thing very much to get there.
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• Study Rooms: The study rooms are great places for groups of THREE OR MORE to work together, be it on a group project, going over notes or studying for a final. If you have a group of THREE OR MORE, head to The Towers or Core and look for rooms that are unlocked and unoccupied. Then, you and your group of THREE OR MORE can sit down for a nice winter’s study sesh. Like God intended. However, sometimes there are no free study rooms. This is probably because someone in a group of two or fewer decided to take a study room all for themselves, despite the fact that most carrels, tables and desks in the library are able to accommodate one to two people. These people are bad people. To find out what I will do to them, please refer to the segment on Periodicals.
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• Deering: With front doors that are newly reopened thanks to ASG’s begging and the University’s desire to throw us a bone every once in a while to distract from tuition increases, Deering is a beautiful place to study Transfiguration, Charms, or Herbology. You can even use the space to cram with friends for your History of Magic exam, but make sure that you keep it down: noise travels more easily than with extendable ears. Thanks to the new doors, you no longer need to travel through the secret passageway from University Library, and you can study by candlelight until your Potions parchment is full.
  

  A screengrab of the livefeed from the camera I’ve hidden in Deering.