All the people you hate in the library

For a lot of us, exam season has now finished and if not, the fear of failing all your summer exams is looming over your head.

Either way, we will all find ourselves in the library very soon, banging our heads against books, drinking various amounts of taurine and caffeine, and falling asleep with our Sultan’s dinners falling from our faces.

As if exam season could get any worse, the most aggravating people crawl from their voids of vexation into the library, with one goal: to pester. These people are determined to drive any career aspirations you may have into the ground.

The keyboard basher

It’s not 1997, keyboards do not make that much noise. You don’t need to bang down on them with the force of a thousand suns. If you are yet to meet your library’s resident basher, you will, I promise.

They can be heard from any floor and any wing of the library, usually coupling their bashing with an occasional sigh or shrug. We do not come to the library to hear you assault your own computer. Just shut up!

The printer-outer

Look at their selfish paper needs

I don’t even understand why people still print shit out. It’s a waste of paper considering that everything, even assignment submissions, are now online.

If you are one of the few that print out pieces of paper to write on, then you need to take a long hard look at yourself and think about the Amazon Rainforest.

Not only is it a stupid thing to do, but if you’re going to do it 5 times in the space of an hour, realise that it’s fucking noisy! The library is meant to be one of, if not, the ONLY quiet place on campus. Nobody wants to hear those constant whirrs and beeps as the soundtrack to their study. Leave that for somewhere else.

The slurper

Not as common as they used to be but on the rare occasion that they enter our realm, it’s annoying all the same.

Whether it’s a water bottle, those coffee cups with the little hole in the lid or a can of Red Bull, they always manage to make loud and disgusting sounds. It’s the sound of someone who has given up on life.

It’s just wrong and to all those slurpers out there: FIX IT! It’s not hard to drink like a normal human being, you’re not sucking on your mum’s boobs for milk anymore.

Shhhh

The mothers’ meeting

If you have a younger sibling and have been to collect them from school before, you will understand the pain of this one. The mothers’ meeting consists of five-six females chatting loudly somewhere where it’s inappropriate, i.e. IN THE LIBRARY.

These meetings are of no real importance, as they have probably seen each other three times that day already, but they nonetheless feel it crucial to hug, scream, shout and get excited over the face of one another. Get yo’ ass down to Costa if you want a place to chat, jheez.

The cougher

Unless you eat 100 oranges a week and are zoning off the Vitamin C, we have all been the cougher at some point, it’s Lancaster, it’s cold. They can range from the deep and chesty, to a pathetic, dry jitter.

The most annoying thing about the cougher is their sheer reluctance to stifle the damn thing: Drink some water! Cover your mouth! You can hear them everywhere, and in a place like Lancaster, where every conceivable disease seems to have been passed around the student body at some point or another, its just disgusting.

The overly-PDA couple

I should hope that no-one reading this has ever been the overly-pda couple, although I doubt that this will be true. These pairs assume that a glass library booth is the perfect place to slowly eat each others’ faces off. NEWSFLASH: It’s called a bedroom.

It has always been hard for me to comprehend why you would even want to engage in PDA in any public area, never mind the library. For most of us, it is a sanctuary from all distractions and noise, a place where we regularly breakdown and contemplate leaving university. We do not need to see you enjoying your fucking life and making things worse for the rest of us.

The one who hasn’t showered in three days

Well this one is just disgusting, who doesn’t shower? The library itself has showering facilities for those who feel it is necessary to read books 22 out of 24 hours of the day. Either way, you have no damn excuse for this. Scrub Up.

The vampires

Please go to bed

The bane of my existence and perhaps everyone else’s. I’m not talking about Dracula or even Mona the Vampire here, I’m talking about those idiots who wake up at seven am, go and save a prime seat in the library from  nine am and never return to it until  six pm, when their lectures are done.

WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO US YOU SELFISH DIMWITS? It’s possible the real blame should be put on the lack of space in the library, even after the renovations, but either way, you people disgust us.