What your library floor says about you

As deadlines start to draw closer we all suddenly start flocking to the library. The library is a peculiar blend of silent work and extreme socialising. When you take a stroll around the library you can expect to bump into at least one person you know and there is nothing better than taking a quick cig break and end up chaining your whole pack with your mate.

There are also certain characteristics that each library floor has.  According to one chap “If one of my mates sits on 5th or 6th floor I am no longer friends with them…what type of wanker sits there”. I think that says it all.

The Basement

We all know that there are new study spaces open in the library basement. However, this has presented a challenge to the socialites of the 4th floor: it’s 2pm, most people are out of lectures, and there are no seats on 4th. The horror. So what do you do? Do you go to the basement where you know that you will get a seat? But at what cost? Apparently sitting in the basement floor is ‘social suicide’ but you have to do that tutorial reading. It’s a tough call to make.

The challenges facing the student population are really big.

Ground Floor

The chances are you are avoiding work by sitting in the library cafe or the lobby under the illusion that you deserve that 2 hour lunch break with your friends because you read 10 pages of an article.

The Hub is a place for those of you scrambling to get that one book that is provided for a course that has 120 people on it and the lecturer expects all of you to read it in two days.

If you are sitting in the ground floor pods and attempting to do work then you are truly delusional – you will spend 97% of the 3 hours you spent there chatting and tagging your mates in random Facebook videos and memes.

1st Floor

The group pods here are a tad more serious. You will all sit round in the slightly more quiet and serious atmosphere but in reality you are the member of your group that is the slacker. There are those who sit on the desks which are a part of the main entrance way on the balcony. They probably have noise cancelling headphones or just extreme self-control.

If you are one of those people who know how to book a study space then you deserve that 1st that you are going to get.

2nd Floor

If you take the lift to this floor then everyone else in the lift will judge/be annoyed by you. Take the stairs. Seriously.

Look at those glorious macs

This is for the more serious worker. But self aware in the fact that they do not want to be there. This floor contains many of the elder years who have decided to leave the 4th floor for the younger generation of Edinburgh Students. Or you just like working on the big macs. It’s probably the latter.

3rd Floor

The lack of books somehow makes it more serious?

I always have considered this to be the most serious floor. People here tend to wear more sensible clothes that are actually appropriate for the Edinburgh winters – who knows they may even carry an umbrella. This is where the people who do subjects like maths, economics, science based subjects etc. The atmosphere is tense as they all have around 27 hand-ins a week and are more coffee than blood.

4th Floor

So many social opportunities

The most well known floor of all. This is the place where the masses flock too. Everyone is either wearing gym kit but not actually going to the gym or are far too well-dressed to be living off just a student loan. The mecca of all 1st and 2nd years. This is the most social place in the library (except the smoking area that you aren’t actually allowed to smoke in) and you will see many gaggles of girls chatting away happily, completely forgetting that they are in a library. The stretch of desks down the long side is essentially a cat-walk for girls and boys trying to show off how many people they know.

5th Floor 

This floor is for post-graduates apparently. But, in reality, it is where excitable new first years go as they don’t quite know what goes on on each floor yet and pressed a random button in the lift and hoped for the best.

Admittedly it does have a cracking view of the Pentlands.

6th Floor

No one knows what happens on this floor.

A complete mystery to me