Ah, the Main Library! Everyone’s favourite study space, productivity haven, procrastination station or social hangout. Words can’t describe my conflicting feelings over this hallowed ground, but I can try.
Our humble library can be characterised as a prison, with its cold concrete and fellow students like myself working there until their sentence (assignment) is complete. But it is just as easily a quaint log cabin; with warmth like I’m sitting beside the fireplace that the receptionists seem to have displayed 24/7 on their desktop. Conjuring up so many emotions inside of me, so many hours of my student life have been swallowed up sitting, hardly working inside.
I can’t study anywhere else. My flat; too cold. Law Library; *too* quiet. Sauna; just perhaps a little bit too warm. The main library; somewhere kind of… just right? Walking in, a sense of dread but familiarity always enthrals me. Fellow workers in the same position surround me, stressed by assignments meant to be finished last week and on the edge of a complete breakdown.
Having such a love/hate relationship with the library has brought me to a point where this building has become as comfortable as my bedroom, in both good ways and bad. Going inside with aspirations of making immense progress on my essays and doing absolutely nothing is a usual feeling. Muscle memory has been created as soon as I scan my library card at the entrance barriers.
Jackets of all shapes and sizes are laid down on desks, reserving seats for their owners who have simply given up for the time being. That space could be used by me, but fate once again has decided this to not be the case. I find a desk with an empty coffee cup situated on top and take it as my own. This will now be my home for the next 12+ hours. Red Bull, snacks and charger are in my bag and ready for the long hours of the exam season to finally come over me; I at least need to make a start on my essay.
And so, I sit and do nothing for the next 3 hours. Feeling comfortable in that furnace of a building to just sit back and do what everyone sitting in my position has done before. A shared memory of the library precedes my presence in that chair. Seeing students come and go, painstakingly bringing up the energy to write and research whatever task their course organisers have assigned them to do is a shared experience.
After those initial hours, I finally remember that I must actually work to exit the building as soon as possible. The Main Library’s brutal appearance acts as a positive in making us students finally work on essays. Exiting the library is my motivation from the second I am inside, pushing me to complete the work that I desperately need to finish.
And so, I do, of course after saying hello to the cleaners, sipping energy drinks into the early and late hours of the morning, before having a view of the sunset to remind me that it was maybe all worth it.
Now 7 am, my pilgrimage to the building is complete and I leave it, ready to sleep. It just seems that the worst of the library, after hours of struggle brings out the best in me; putting so much pressure to escape that it’s a better reason to work than achieving a decent grade in my essay that’s worth 60% of my course.
This shared experience of the library brings us closer. We have all gone through the motions of Main Library resentment but yet, the resentment itself brings us back into its grounds when we need it most.
“University of Edinburgh Main Library” by oosp is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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The Main Library; a love/hate relationship
Ah, the Main Library! Everyone’s favourite study space, productivity haven, procrastination station or social hangout. Words can’t describe my conflicting feelings over this hallowed ground, but I can try.
Our humble library can be characterised as a prison, with its cold concrete and fellow students like myself working there until their sentence (assignment) is complete. But it is just as easily a quaint log cabin; with warmth like I’m sitting beside the fireplace that the receptionists seem to have displayed 24/7 on their desktop. Conjuring up so many emotions inside of me, so many hours of my student life have been swallowed up sitting, hardly working inside.
I can’t study anywhere else. My flat; too cold. Law Library; *too* quiet. Sauna; just perhaps a little bit too warm. The main library; somewhere kind of… just right? Walking in, a sense of dread but familiarity always enthrals me. Fellow workers in the same position surround me, stressed by assignments meant to be finished last week and on the edge of a complete breakdown.
Having such a love/hate relationship with the library has brought me to a point where this building has become as comfortable as my bedroom, in both good ways and bad. Going inside with aspirations of making immense progress on my essays and doing absolutely nothing is a usual feeling. Muscle memory has been created as soon as I scan my library card at the entrance barriers.
Jackets of all shapes and sizes are laid down on desks, reserving seats for their owners who have simply given up for the time being. That space could be used by me, but fate once again has decided this to not be the case. I find a desk with an empty coffee cup situated on top and take it as my own. This will now be my home for the next 12+ hours. Red Bull, snacks and charger are in my bag and ready for the long hours of the exam season to finally come over me; I at least need to make a start on my essay.
And so, I sit and do nothing for the next 3 hours. Feeling comfortable in that furnace of a building to just sit back and do what everyone sitting in my position has done before. A shared memory of the library precedes my presence in that chair. Seeing students come and go, painstakingly bringing up the energy to write and research whatever task their course organisers have assigned them to do is a shared experience.
After those initial hours, I finally remember that I must actually work to exit the building as soon as possible. The Main Library’s brutal appearance acts as a positive in making us students finally work on essays. Exiting the library is my motivation from the second I am inside, pushing me to complete the work that I desperately need to finish.
And so, I do, of course after saying hello to the cleaners, sipping energy drinks into the early and late hours of the morning, before having a view of the sunset to remind me that it was maybe all worth it.
Now 7 am, my pilgrimage to the building is complete and I leave it, ready to sleep. It just seems that the worst of the library, after hours of struggle brings out the best in me; putting so much pressure to escape that it’s a better reason to work than achieving a decent grade in my essay that’s worth 60% of my course.
This shared experience of the library brings us closer. We have all gone through the motions of Main Library resentment but yet, the resentment itself brings us back into its grounds when we need it most.
“University of Edinburgh Main Library” by oosp is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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