Right now, I am sitting in the kitchen of my rather small apartment unit on Court Street, wondering how I will get the five hundred plus pages of reading for my four midterms done in the next three days. My rather poor work ethic these days is not something that I can completely attribute to my lack of planning. As I sit here, in a poorly lit kitchen (despite the two lamps and overhead light) that I came down from my poorly lit room to study in, I wonder why the library couldn’t be open a little later.
I’m a transfer student here from a rather rigorous university in Manhattan. Despite the workload that I thought was heavy until I came to Wesleyan, there were no restrictions on library hours at my previous university. In fact, the main library was open for 24 hours, five days a week. For someone who couldn’t get their work done during the day due to heavy scheduling, I found this to be a huge convenience that I guess I’ve taken for granted. But to what extent is my wishing Olin were open 24 hours at least twice a week a foolish dream?
Why are restrictions put upon the hours that I can effectively study? I know that the ST lab is open, but that’s about it, and it’s a paltry substitute for any sort of reading room. The lack of facilities seems to be a reality that people accept without an argument here, probably because many of them have never experienced the convenience of a library that is open whenever hard-working students with busy schedules need it.
We are young people, and many of us are up studying past two in the morning. I’m aware that keeping the library hours restricted is a good way to encourage students to finish their work between specific hours in order to sleep well and stay healthy, but, in all honesty, I’m up many nights until four or five in the morning trying to finish up my work; and I’m not the only one.
I am tired of my studying hours being restricted. This is not effective for me, and gives me the feeling that I’m being told when I should be working and when I shouldn’t be. With tuition being hiked up even more, I think that the administration could reserve some more money to pay for Olin or/and Science Library to remain open all night at least once or twice a week. This may seem ineffective, but, I think that it would make it clear that the administration is taking students’ lives and studying more seriously than I believe it has in the past. We need to feel like our work is being taken seriously, and we need an awareness of our situation for ourselves and the powers-higher-up to do it effectively.
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