Last year I spent nearly my entire existence at the CSOL library studying. There were no "rules" on study rooms then, so whenever I would get to the library (usually I was first), I would grab a study room and Laura, Tiffany, Amber and I would generally just park there for the day and get all of our work done.
This year they have changed the study room policy. You have to check out a "key" to a study room (sidenote: there are not actually locks on the study room doors; the key is just a decoy key attached to a wooden block with the room number on it to show that you have legitimately checked the room out. Last week I watched two 1Ls struggle wholeheartedly for at least 2 minutes to unlock a study room door with the "key" and then embarrassingly enter with no problem when they tried the handle. Good times.). I understand the basic premise behind this policy - prevention of study room "hogging." However, because my group has become somewhat indifferenced, we now don't make it to the library as early as we used to, which means there's usually not a study room available when we get there. That would be fine, if our library operated on the same principle as all other libraries in the world - SILENCE.
Our library is in an old train depot (old as in 1900's) so I get that the acoustics aren't great. What I don't get is the people using their Nascar-race-yelling voices while looking up statutes, or the EMPLOYEES who work in the library shooting the shit with no regard or semblance of recognition that people are studying. Or, my personal favorite, is that every other week there seems to be some sort of construction going on, so in case Torts wasn't painful enough, let's add a drill to the background to really ease the study process along.
Because of all the aforementioned nonsense, I have taken to studying at College of Charleston's library. As I settled into my corner cubby on the 3rd floor today, I suddenly realized that an undergraduate school's library with students generally between the ages of 18-21 have a better respect for study habits than future lawyers, somewhere between the ages of 22-?.
I totally get that lawyers inherently love to talk but C'MON. It's a library for gosh sakes.
All of this made me think back to the show "All That" and how Lori Beth Denburg (fat girl) used to have a segment where she was a librarian and any noise a person made she'd yell at the top of her lungs: "THIS IS A LIBEARY!!"
These CSOL people are driving me to that...
