Booked up and Burnt out: Bristol’s seat shortage crisis

Spring rolls around, and with it comes the annual battle of finding a study seat. It’s Bristol’s version of the Hunger Games; morals? What morals?  14 different study centres, doesn’t seem to cut it.

We’ve all been that person who turned up late to the library, and now has to endure the humiliation ritual of trudging up and down the aisles trying to spot a seat. Pretending to look for a friend, attempting to avoid making eye contact with the countless mutuals who are all smugly demonstrating how they leapt out of bed at 8:10 as opposed to 8:20. Feeling your heart jump as you spot an empty chair, only to have your hopes ripped away from you when you see the dreaded laptop or water bottle on the table, a solitary symbol of ownership.

Its one of those situations where its only okay if you do it – when you cant find a seat, you feel personal outrage that people would deny you a place, but when you have a seat, its only right that you should keep it as long as you like. After all, you fought tooth and nail for it.

As much as its funny to joke about, it may be that this signifies a serious problem with Bristol study spaces.

Almost every study centre is jam-packed this time of year, with spaces filling up by 10am even on weekends. The ASS is usually the most in-demand, probably due to the complete and utter sensory deprivation it offers which forces you to lock in. Something about those clinical white lights and lime green accents make you so horrified you do your work as a distraction. But this is a university-wide problem, with other spaces like Wills and Senate being a bloodbath of desperate students fighting for a seat. To put it into perspective, there’s a total of about 3,402 seats in managed study areas, around 2000 of these being silent spaces. 3,402 seats compared to around 23,865 undergraduate students. Not even the total student body, just undergraduates. That’s a ratio of nearly 7:1 students to seats.

It may be that Bristol needs to make more study centres like the ASS – silent and sterile. As well as the bleak environment, it may be that more study places need to be made 24/7, to accommodate for all you night owls (or serious procrastinators). Some have called for more subject-specific study areas on campus as although certain departments have their own library, these often operate as general libraries, with most students being able to access them. Others call for a more controversial year-group based system – it seems freshers aren’t too popular in the ASS, and some think that spaces should be reserved for run-down third years trudging through their dissertations. Either way, its clear something needs doing. This of course comes after the recent news that the building of Bristol’s new cultural destination library has been put on pause.

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The booking of study spaces arouses much controversy across the student body. For those of you who don’t know, certain study desks can be booked online, with each student receiving a set limit of bookable hours per week. Some students take full advantage of this, pre-booking their seats to ensure they get a safe study space. But this then comes with the unfortunate consequence of having to kick another student out of your seat, if they’ve made the grievous mistake of taking your place. An uncomfortable situation for all involved. Having been kicked out of a seat before, trust me, you don’t want to put yourself through that. Full disclosure, scrambling to pack up all your stuff then scurrying off with your tail between your legs to scavenge another seat – humbling.

Booking the seats is a good idea in theory, but sometimes there are limits as to what’s reasonable. Waking up at the crack of dawn and snagging a seat only to find out its been booked in one-hour chunks by someone comfortably snuggled up in bed is not exactly a good way to start the day. Obviously, booking a seat is fine, but if you know you won’t be there for that long, maybe ask yourself if there’s someone who needs it more than you. Trying a different study spot, or even a café, might not be such a bad idea. Perhaps leave the booking to the people who are struggling through 12-hour stints.

Horror stories run wild, tales of relinquishing a seat to someone who only stays for an hour, or people reserving their seats for hours on end using a single piece of paper (come on people, a lunch break is fine but some of you are pushing it). Rumours flying around about a game of rock-paper-scissors deciding who got to the seat first, and so gets to keep it. It’s easy to get caught up in the ruckus of it all, and feel a hot flush of temper when things don’t go your way. But its important to remember that everyone is in the same boat. We all have assignments, we all want to find a space – the simmering stress of exam season gets to us all. As frustrating as it is, try to remember that everyone struggles with it just as much as you, so lets give each other a little grace.