Library Etiquette

I have been spending an extraordinary amount of time in the library recently, what with my dissertation being due in 3 weeks and all (2 weeks 5 days, in fact...which means I probably should not be writing this right now, but I'm stuck so I'm taking a 'break'), and I've seen some interesting sights in the past few weeks. Here's some library dos and don'ts (actually just don'ts, but 'dos and don'ts' sounds better).

DON'T

Eat crisps - crunch, crunch, crunch, rustle rustle, crunch, crunch, crunch. Enough said. Everyone flouts the 'no eating and drinking in the library' rule - I am currently munching on a Twirl - but don't do it with crisps. They are impossible to eat quietly. I tried it once and succeeded only in making my crisps soggy in my mouth. Yuck.

Sing loudly to yourself - I have seen this happen. It was funny. The girl stopped when I walked in the room and we both laughed about it, but if she had obliviously carried on I'm pretty sure it would have become very annoying very fast.

Watch hour-long BBC iPlayer programs on the library computers when there's a massive queue of people waiting to get on and do actual uni work  - there was a whiney article in the Gaudie recently about people going on facebook on the library computers. I disagree. I have no problem with people going on facebook, as long as that is not their sole reason for taking up a valuable computer. I currently have facebook open in another tab, and obviously this blog does not come under 'uni work'.  But, it being a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon when only the hardcore and/or desperate are stuck in this pit, I'm sitting across from two completely free computers and I'm multi-tasking: every time I get stuck on my dissertation I am coming on here and writing a bit and then going back to the dissertation with fresh eyes (that's the theory, anyway...). But if you're sitting watching online TV, that's all you can possibly be doing. And I wouldn't have a problem with it if there were lots of computers free, but if you're taking up a computer to watch 'Snog Marry Avoid' when loads of people are waiting to work on their imminently-due dissertations, that's not cool. Extra annoyance points for you if you have the volume up so loud everyone else can hear it spilling out your earphones.

Wear warm clothes - the library is stupidly hot and stuffy. You will melt. Some unfortunate person will be given the wholly undesirable job of cleaning up your liquid remains and you won't get your dissertation/essay/whatever handed in on time, due to being all melted and such. It's a bit of an extreme way to get an extension, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Bring a mini deckchair for your book to sit on - It had pink and yellow stripes. I presume it was so that the guy's hand/wrist wouldn't have to suffer the trauma of holding the book he was looking at. It didn't work; the pages kept flipping over, so he constantly had one hand on the book to keep his place. Then eventually he resorted to taking the book off the strange contraption and holding it anyway. What with his deckchair, laptop, notebook and rucksack he took up enough space on the table for two people. Greedy. The most amusing part came when he left and had a 20 minute long struggle to fit the deckchair back into his rucksack. It's bad enough trying to fit all your books into your bag and carry them about with you, but adding an awkwardly-shaped-and-probably-not-that-lightweight deckchair to the mix? That's just silly. If you have ever done such a thing, give yourself two ridiculous points and then take one away for providing entertainment to your fellow bored library users.

Sit with your girlfriend/boyfriend and eat their face at every opportunity - I don't know how you even find opportunity for kissing  in the library. It's not the most romantic place to take someone on a date. Since libraries are generally quiet, everyone will be disgusted by the wet slurpy noises that your kissing makes, and your whispers about what you're going to do to each other later will carry to the ears of surrounding exasperated - and now horrified - students.

Procrastinate - you want to spend as little time in the hot, stuffy deckchair- and couple-filled library as possible. The less you procrastinate the more you will get done and the quicker you can escape off home where you can eat crisps, sing to yourself, and watch BBC iPlayer to your heart's content.

So on that note, I should probably get back to the dissertation...

Procrastination from Dissertation

I am an extremely skilled procrastinator, and if there were such a thing as a degree in Procrastination I would have a PhD in it already. 

Today my to-do list looked like this: 

I woke up feeling motivated and ready to go. One item to tick off? Easy!

Actually, that’s a lie. Scratch that. 

I dragged myself out of bed and, obviously, needed breakfast. So I decided to make porridge, because it takes a long time to make. While waiting, I decided to check my emails in case I had an urgent one from Uni telling me dissertations were cancelled. If that happened and I hadn’t checked, my day would be wasted! I didn’t have any such email, but the naughty internet still sucked away an hour of my time. During this hour, I found a recipe for peanut butter cookies and it said they only took fifteen minutes to make! So I thought to myself, well, I can surely spare fifteen minutes to make these cookies, and then I will still have all day to do my dissertation, and I will also have nice home-made (because if it’s home-made it’s healthier and therefore counts as one of your five-a-day.) cookies to help me through the trauma of it.  

So I went and searched through my cupboard for the required ingredients, and found that I didn’t have enough sugar; I would have to go to the supermarket. Problem: I was still in my pyjamas.

Forty-five minutes later I was on my way to the supermarket (because straightening one’s hair and applying a full face of make-up is clearly essential in this situation. And that’s after the trying-on and discarding – on to the bedroom floor - of several different outfits). The supermarket is five minutes away, if that, from my flat but I somehow accidentally went there via Topshop (twenty minutes away in the opposite direction)  and then decided that since I was in Topshop I might as well try on some things I had no intention of buying. And then, once I had dragged myself out of Topshop I decided that since I was in town, I might as well have a look round some other shops. After a couple of hours of aimless wandering and lusting after clothes and shoes I can’t afford, I ended up buying a new cafetiere  (It’s purple and makes one cup of coffee and cost £15; I cannot afford to pay £15 for a one-cup cafetiere but did so anyway because it is absolutely essential to my life to have a purple cafetiere.) and Glamour magazine. 

Three hours later I finally arrived back at the flat and then, of course, had no choice but to read every single page of Glamour, including all the adverts (even all those crappy ones for plastic surgery and teeth whitening in the back few pages), which wasted another couple of hours. It was then I realised that I hadn’t bought sugar to make those fifteen-minute cookies with, and it being a good bit after lunch-time, I was hungry. 

Unfortunately, I’d made tapas last night, and had left-over Spanish omelette and patatas bravas to munch on, meaning no time could be wasted in preparing food. So I decided to watch a program on BBC iPlayer while I ate. It was, of course, extremely high-brow and made a lasting impression on me, so much so that I now have no remaining recollection of what I watched. Only that it was ninety minutes in length, by which point I was feeling rather sick due to over-consumption of potato. 

I still wanted to make those cookies, but now they had become something to procrastinate from doing, too. I decided to clean the fridge in order to have a clean environment in which to bake. Clean fridges are essential to baking. But on my way through to the kitchen I spotted the Census form sitting on the living room table and decided I’d better fill it in. It took a disappointingly short amount of time, so I phoned my mother. She was only mildly disgruntled that I was using her to procrastinate. That’s what mums are for. 

Then mum had to go and I realised there was now no escaping the dreaded dissertation. But somehow the TV went on. I don’t know how that happened, but it did. There was nothing really on worth watching, so I had to spend some time deciding which DVD out of four shelves-worth to watch. Deciding was a long process, involving organising them alphabetically and then by genre. I finally settled on The Last Kiss. Once it was over I came online to check something, but ended up creating this blog instead. 

Once I’ve posted this, I am going to do some dissertation. Although, as mum reminded me on the phone, we lose an hour tonight. So I should probably just go to bed early and get that hour of sleep I would otherwise miss. 

Tomorrow I will need to tidy away all those clothes I discarded on my bedroom floor, clean the fridge as promised, go to the gym after eating all that potato today, and then make a start on my dissertation.

And I never did make those cookies; so I should probably do that, or else how will I get through my dissertation without sustenance?!