Here is a piece of good advice for you: Shut up.
In our world of video chats and cell phones, microphones and open mic nights, voice recorders and recorded ringtones, I have this piece of advice for everyone: Just shut the hell up.
More specifically, shut the hell up in the library. In our library, beautiful Penrose, ranked seventh in the nation of college libraries, we have a room students know as the Quiet Reading Room. I find this ridiculous. The library should be a quiet reading room. That’s why it’s a library.
I’m sick of sitting with my laptop, being forced to listen to the boys at the next table with voices rising, talking about what party they are going to this weekend. I should not be banished to the room where I can’t sit by a window and where there is never enough elbow space just because I like to work in quiet.
I’m nostalgic for days I never knew, days I lovingly watch mocked on TV, when compulsive librarians would waddle about and reprimand anyone speaking with a harsh “SHH. THIS IS A LIBRARY.”
I’ll admit that I get annoyed when voices rise about any topic of discussion, even academic-related. But when I am logical, I know that it is one thing to be engaged in a valuable discussion, to open up a dialogue with the transfer of information and ideas and communication. That is what a library is all about. However, it is a completely different thing to say, quoting the people sitting at the table next to mine at this very moment when I should be writing an essay, “Dude, the girl who dances around with Barack Obama on her underwear didn’t even bother to register to vote.”*
And as a flawed human with errors of her own, I’ll admit I sometimes forget my pet peeve and annoy those around me in the library with escalating discussion as well. My hatred of this seems to only become most pronounced when I am stressfully and fitfully trying to pound out a paper.
True, I could go someplace else. I’m not denying that: there are empty classrooms and study rooms, dorm rooms and hallways. My plight isn’t a hard one. But does that change the fact that silence has become less and less rightfully revered, and people’s conversations have become more and more annoying? No.
Take a moment and enjoy silence. I know that communication is grand and that we as humans are social beings: trust me, I was the girl with “Is much too chatty at times” written without fail on her report card. But there is a time and a place for engaging in certain conversations, and that place is anywhere but the library, at any time. Go to Reid. Go to the fraternities. Go someplace else.
I say, people who want to socialize, to talk boisterously and tap on tables and read their horoscopes out loud and be witty and clever and laugh with their friends: you are the ones who should get the study rooms. Lock yourself in these rooms where you can be boisterous to your hearts’ content. Or we could put you in a newly renamed “Allen Talking Room.” All of us who want to actually study and write papers we have saved until six hours before the deadline can get the rest of the building.
In conclusion, let me issue my plea, which I’m sure in all this ruckus will go unheard: Please, kindly, shut up.
*[No personal offense to these people. Frankly, I’m shocked by this as well, but you happened to be handy at the time I needed an example.]
