I will be informing our faithful readership of the worst study spots — the places you must avoid if you want to do any thoughtful work. I humbly present them in no particular order:
The first floor of Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
This is a cafeteria. The library, if we’re attaching any truth to its definition, begins on the second floor. In the same way that auditoriums are built to maximize the sound on the stage and project it across the audience and up onto the second deck, I suspect that the first floor of Tulane’s library was designed to amplify and swirl every single noise into a deafening cacophony that engulfs even the remotest corners of the room. On the sixth floor of the library, it is said, you can hear a pin drop. On the first floor, “noise-canceling” headphones will not work any more than an umbrella works underwater.
The Small Family Collaboration Hub
The study space in The Hub has all you could need to study—solo desks, high-top chairs, booths, whiteboards and private rooms. It also happens to have a 700-foot-wide screen that broods over everything like the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. From what I can tell, at one point, someone turned on SportsCenter and promptly lost the remote, so that college football highlights beam across the room at all times. These subtle changes in lighting distract even the most diligent student. At night, the screen becomes more illuminated and pronounced, and from the outside the place looks like a Buffalo Wild Wings. To solve its identity crisis, The Hub needs to rip the screen off the wall—or start selling wings and beer. Until then, it will remain in that awkward gap between a bad study spot and a lame sports bar.
The tables outside the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, facing the Berger Family Lawn
If you describe yourself as an “aesthetic” person, if you like the picturesque, if you are concerned with looking good while you study— you most likely relish the opportunity to take your artsy notebook to the tables outside of the LBC for some color-coordinated note taking with an assortment of vibrant pens, glancing up every 10 seconds to make sure the world notices you and your neatness. You probably saw, for the first time, those yellow tables with the fancy chairs, those turquoise umbrellas, that modern glass building in the background, that luscious quad in the foreground, and said, “Oh my god, this has such a college vibe.” Whenever you see the campus photographer wander by, you secretly hope he notices your neatness and captures it for Tulane’s next brochure. You probably don’t notice, amidst all the glam, how awful of a study spot it is—how the tables are messy, and the chairs wet, how the wind flaps your pages up and down, how difficult it can be to focus in the busiest and most gossipy place on campus.
Any lunchroom, including the Malkin Sacks Commons, the LBC dining area, etc.
Multitasking, unless you are a particularly talented unicyclist, is always a bad idea. You may think, as you take down notes with one hand and gnaw on pizza from the other, that you are being productive, that you are saving time. What you are actually doing is scribbling words you won’t remember while chewing food you can’t taste. You are getting the worst of both worlds. Take a breath. Put your work to the side for ten minutes and enjoy your food. Then you can study.
But, you may say, what if I’m in a rush, and I have to get this done in five minutes? If that assignment is so urgent, I would reply, “why on earth are you in the cafeteria snacking on fajitas right now?” Food can wait; due dates cannot. Anyone truly crammed with work should not be in a dining hall in the first place. They should be studying somewhere else, though certainly not at the tables outside the LBC, The Hub or the first floor of the library.
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