Quiet please!

Summer term is in full swing. The sun’s come out, ice lolly sales are soaring and students are tackling the ultimate challenge of avoiding duck poo in their flip-flops. Oh, and in case you hadn’t heard, it’s exam period too. But of course you’ve heard – even if you haven’t got any exams yourselves you will doubtless have been subject to one of the most irritating mass whinges ever to afflict this innocent little Yorkshire campus.

I’m talking about the library and, more specifically, people’s disgust and love for complaining that it has a inexcusably limited number of seats. Seats that are sometimes ignorantly filled by other people when the space was without a doubt created for you…

We’re students. This means, by nature, that the vast majority of us will have left the bulk of our year’s work to cram into this short space of pre-exam frenzy. It makes sense then that library is going to be quite busy, so I’m going to give you two options: stop complaining and deal with the problem or find a solution.

I know people who have finally risen from the cess pit that they call a bed, their lumpy, crusty-sheeted, crisp-littered hell-hole, at half past 11, and then proceeded to complain to me in one of those unfortunate, hugely undesirable chance campus meetings about the fact that when they got to the library they couldn’t find a seat. This is quite simply the worst breed of library complainer – if you care enough to rant at me, a mere acquaintance at best, for a good part of 10 minutes, then why don’t you prove it by getting up a few hours earlier to ensure yourself a spot. If this is important enough to you that you’re willing to sacrifice my welfare with your moaning, then you can sacrifice a small portion of your sleep. The worst thing about these people is that you know, whilst talking to them, that they’re secretly over the moon that the library is full. They get the best of both worlds: the rant to show their pretence of care, and what they really want – to go back to bed.

Another, admittedly less annoying breed of library complainer, is that which consists of people who do manage to scrounge themselves a seat, yet still insist on moaning about the library itself. Either it’s “too hot” and it “smells”, or it’s “too loud” and “the colour scheme and decor isn’t conducive to a good working environment…” These are all genuine complaints I have heard against the library. If it is too loud for you to work even there then you have serious problems with your concentration, and as for the colour scheme and decor, some people will go to ridiculous lengths to find an excuse not to work. I am in no way saying that am the perfect student here, far from it, but I can admit that my pitfalls are down to me and not the smell in the humanities reading room.

We are at the stage now where moaning about the library has become an activity; an alternative to revision. People complain to make themselves feel better about the fact that they are potentially going to fail their degree through laziness, and to convince themselves that at least they have tried. The truth is, of course, that you really haven’t, but despite the fact that you make me want to tear off my ears (before I realise that wouldn’t actually stop me from hearing you), I am actually going to try and help you. If you really are too set in your ways to get up before lunchtime I suggest that you do the unspeakable and work from home.

For some absurd reason many students simply do not see this as an option, and the whole maddening fiasco begs the question: how did any students work before university, when they most likely did not have a library to work in at all? Being at York most of you will have got pretty decent grades at A-Level to be here. Now I believe, unless I and everybody else I know is totally out of the ordinary, that people revised in the comforts of their own home for the exams that got them here; yet, suddenly, this has become impossible – apparently it’s the library or nothing.

You say there are too many distractions, but then you also have the will-power of a squirrel with a nicotine addiction. If you really cannot find it within yourself to shut your door for a few hours and get some decent work done, away from the magnetic draw of Countdown and Deal or No Deal on the TV downstairs, then you quite simply have no hope.

Considering the exam period only lasts a few weeks and you have spent the majority of the previous two terms slacking off as much as possible, partying hard at night and monging out the following day, is it really too much to ask students to change their attitudes for a short space of time during the third term? To actually be students for a few weeks of the year? Doesn’t sound fun I know, but at the end of the day it is why we’re all here, isn’t it?