With finals fast approaching, there will be thousands of frustrated Knights no doubt flocking to the library to have some quality studying time with their best friend the PowerPoint Slideshow. However, due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, the experience is frequently an unpleasant one due to the lack of common courtesy on several people’s parts.
Here are some tips to avoid angering studious students laboring in the library.
1. Get off Facebook.
This is a chief offender and a high ranking annoyance. If you are using a public desktop in the library, then you had best be using it for schoolwork rather than gathering bits and pieces of what happened to you the night before through. Honestly, if you’re signed on to social not-working in the library then you obviously aren’t doing anything particularly productive, so sign out and let someone who has real work to do use the computer. The same goes for anyone checking sports scores or heaven forbid, something X-rated. If you’re on your own laptop though, you of course can do whatever you want; it’s just a bit pointless to be in the library doing something you could do in the comforts of your own home.
2. Don’t blast your music.
I’ve seen people listen to music from their laptops without headphones and play music so loudly through their earbuds that I’m listening to the same thing you are, without even asking, above the volume of my own iPod. If you go beyond the risk of going deaf from listening to anything at such obscene volumes, you run the risk of incurring the rage of your fellow library goers who may rip your ears off for being so inconsiderate. Keeping your music at a volume just below a dull roar would be great, both for you and those around you.
3. Keep chatter to a minimum.
Whispering loudly is just as bad talking at a normal volume. Now, this isn’t a problem on the first or second floor, but once you hit the third or higher it’s probably a good bet to limit the stories of your escapades from the night before to when you’re not currently studying.
4. Clean up after yourself.
You are not at your house, and you are old enough to clean up after yourself. Do you really think anyone wants to wipe the crumbs of the sole available table? No one is asking you to break out the Lysol and the Febreze, but grabbing a napkin and brushing off the mess YOU made shouldn’t be too much to ask.
5. If you must eat, eat quietly.
This isn’t the movies, leave the nachos at home. Candy wrappers and loud food is not welcome. My old high school didn’t allow food at all, so the prospect of food in a library was both foreign and exciting when I first came here. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no need to bring in your tray full of food, with snacks, drinks, more food, candy and more drinks like UCF is about to go through a major famine.
6. Large, loud study group? Get a room.
Sometimes we really get into a subject and get a little rowdy. If you’re in a large group that may get loud, go ahead and reserve a room so less people are disturbed. However, bear in mind that these rooms are not soundproof so if you’re still a few decibels over a dull bellow you’ll be heard, and the people next to you will probably bang on the walls, which just…adds to the noise.
7. Got a room? Don’t suck face.
Study rooms are in high demand in the last few weeks of every semester, due to the limited amount o f them and people lingering when their time is up (see 7a). But if you’re in the lucky handful that managed to snag one, do everyone a favor and keep your tongues in your own mouth. Furthermore, please for the love of all things good, don’t do the dirty deed anywhere in the library. If you’re so desperate for sex, stay home.
7a) Got a room? Leave when you’re supposed to.
As stated above, study rooms get scarce and people get antsy. Don’t stay over the time you were allotted since that’s just selfish. I mean, don’t you hate it when you know someone’s time is up and they’re still in there?
8. Cell phone? Keep it down.
Not because the second floor is loose on talking rules means you have free rein to talk about who did what to whom at obnoxious volumes. Regardless of floor, if you’re using a cell phone, don’t talk at megaphone levels, and make sure you’re in an area where phone use isn’t generally frowned upon. Be aware that talking in the stairwell is an option, but it echoes in there, and it’ll travel. Also, if your phone is on vibrate, put it in your pocket or on your lap, not on the table, since that’s just as noisy as actual ringing.
9. Have kids? Control them.
Loud, obnoxious children are enemies of quietude. Exercise some parenting skills and keep your child(ren) in one place, since the library is a place to study, not a book-filled playground. No one wants to deal with a hyper little four year old overturning books and yelling about it.
10. Do not mutilate the library’s property.
There is nothing edgy about defacing the tables or writing pointless nonsense in the pages of books that are expensive or difficult to replace. No one gives a crap if “Riley was here”, so don’t bother engraving it into a desk. You wouldn’t want some random person writing in your shelf of books, so don’t do it to UCF’s stash.
