I revise in the wrong subject library and you can’t stop me

I feel no shame


Every day humanities students pour into Bristol’s Arts and Social Sciences Library and every day they shuffle and squirm at the lack of free desk spaces. Complaints are made, angry YikYaks are written, and someone always hangs their head in disappointment and treks back to their house on the other side of Bristol. What they need to do instead though is what I do: revise in other libraries. There’s a lot to be gained by being a library location slut. Here’s why you should do it too.

 

Other subjects’ libraries offer so much more space than your own one

Why would I want to spend four hours in my own library where I have to fight for a seat with three other people only to end up squashed between a rugby player who smells like a wet dog and some hipster playing Mozart so loud I wish I could tell him where to stick his magic flute.

The only time the ASS library is as empty as the Chemistry library is 4am on a Sunday. Seriously though, that place is as empty as Donald Trump’s soul.

Other libraries look like palaces compared to yours

Sometimes fate would have it that your subject has to study in the squalor of what looks like a UWE building while your mate gets to revise in what looks like the reading room at Buckingham Palace (cough cough Law library).

Lawyers actually get to study in this thing

Your friends study in other libraries and there’s nothing more entertaining than taking a short revision break to irritate Tim who does Vet Science

“Hey Tim what happens if I dissect this part of the dog’s leg?”

Revising in a foreign library makes you feel defiant in a fun albeit extremely petty way

You’re not supposed to be there and don’t lie, this thrills you. During my week I go wherever my mood might take me. If Tuesday feels like a Chemistry day then I brush away your Bunsen burners and sprawl my ancient history text books across the desk. If Friday is an engineering day then I will dive into my copy of the Odyssey while in the midst of the newest Japanese delegation.

If Sunday feels like a History of Art day then I will probably stay at home because those people don’t read books.

Other libraries’ names aren’t references to humorous body parts

“Christ I was in the ASS for so long last night that my body started to hurt.”

We’ve heard them all before, all too many times.

There’s never any space in the ASS

Your library is always full of those coursemates that you hardly know but always make awkward conversation with you

“So, revising Herodotus I see.”

“Yeah I particularly enjoyed page 32 of this book on him.”

“Cool…”

Reading random books from other people’s libraries is the perfect form of procrastination which also makes you happy that you didn’t study that course

“Ah finally just what I needed, the Beginner’s Guide To Intrinsic Electromagnetic Relations between Biometric and Non-Biometric Organisms…..”

You can tell you’re annoying the resident students who belong there which is an entertaining way of getting back at them for being a smug Medic the whole time

When you do find your perfect seat you are always harassed by irritating engineers and chemists who pipe that “you shouldn’t be reading Thucydides in my favourite spot.”

Unwelcome everywhere, you begin to understand how asylum seekers must feel. However, the pleas of “but your department doesn’t pay for this building” or “but all the books in this library are useless to you” fall on deaf ears as you revel in the joys of the fuck you mentality.

You’re entitled to use your space to help ease the overcrowding of your home library and to fulfil your own sense of petty rebellion, and don’t you forget it.