When you have to study, even the ceiling is more interesting

Welcome to midterms season!

I’d show you a picture of my testing schedule for the rest of the semester, but it depresses me too much, so I try to avoid looking at it.

Last week I mentioned the Engineering School’s newly opened Rice Hall was my favorite place to study…This week I've been up til 5 AM three nights in a row, which is not normal, even for semi-nocturnal college students. To put it in perspective: I've spent more time on the 4^th floor of Rice Hall than I have in my apartment, awake or asleep.

Now, this blog isn't about whining about how tired I am. Instead of telling the story of how I walked into a construction sign because I was too tired to notice it, I’ll tell you the story of our caravan through grounds trying to find a new space to study.

I detest libraries. Places like Clemons and Alderman always seem so full of misery and stress, because that’s where everyone goes when they really need to get work done.

Plus, these libraries are on the other side of grounds from the Engineering School and all of my classes, so I try to find places to study on E-Way (the sidewalk all engineering classes are on), which are conveniently located near first year dorms, for all of you potential Wahoos out there. Rice is always our favorite place to start, just because none of us can get over the cool features in it…like the projected touch screen computer outside all the server rooms, the pieces of glass functioning as whiteboards, or the temperature sensors on the building that lower blinds when floors get too hot.

But any building gets boring after 8 hours, so by 2 AM we were ready to move. The next best place for us was the Physical and Life Sciences Building (affectionately known as PLSB), which is also pretty new and has ping pong tables in it. (In case you were wondering, you could live in either of those buildings…both have kitchens on every floor, showers somewhere in the building, and super comfy chairs that you could use as beds…totally not saying that from personal experience).

Alternating between those two buildings worked pretty well at night, but during the day we’d try to find places that weren't open at night…like the Special Collections Library, next to Alderman and Clemons, or my personal favorite non-engineering building: Newcomb. The newly renovated student activities building has couches and tables everywhere…so really any place you can find is open for studying, or napping, depending on the time of day.

Studying may not always be the most fun (you can only be so motivated to work if you’re still up when your roommate leaves for ROTC in the morning), but if you can find that one place that no one else has discovered and take it over, well, it gets a little bit better.

If you were wondering, the current official study anthem of the Rice 4^th Floor Computer Engineers (picture: 4-20 year old guys and me) can be found here. Enjoy J