"Going Out" for Students: Mentally Compulsory?
Just another of the grind here in the LSE Library, on the gigantic working table with six strangers coincidentally sitting quietly, each intently focused on his or her little section of the table in front of them. Each buries his or her face in the massive pile of academic books, journals, and/or a notebook computer opened to some online journal article. Each person invariably takes out a notebook, frantically jotting down lines after lines of neat notes as they flip through pages or scroll through screens...
But they all do zone off, very inconspicuously. Their eyes are still on the books, journals, computer screens, but their minds are obviously somewhere else. Their eyes no longer keep moves along with the endless mesh-mash of words and sentences. Its like staring out of the window or the wall back in the classrooms of high school, only we here at the library table, perhaps because of the six others (plus however many at the adjacent tables) watching over the each of us constantly (so we tell ourselves), refuse to secretly embarrass ourselves by openly admitting loss of concentration.
It is these times that I envy the guy sitting at the corner, near the windows. He pulls open his laptop, and the eyes start moving more wildly than needed for reading an academic paper, and his typing becomes inconsistent short spurts, dubious for essay writing (barring the most creative and "brilliant" writers). Mundane entertainments of Facebook and email takes over, and the guy suddenly transports himself to a happier private space, much to the quiet dismay of the others, who can either continue the pattern of self-distraction or painfully ignore the signal by trying to toil in academic work even harder.
Yet, even as the quiet battle of concentration and embarrassment carries on at the six-person table in the Library, sometimes I feel that the six of us already established a Sixth Sense mental connection od some sort the moment we all sat down. The boredom and the annoyance with ending work are by all means communal, mutually felt, and understand. We all know we want to be somewhere else, but somehow manages (once in a while) fight back the temptations of doing something else to be here, at the studying table.
But the distractions just won't go away. The guy with the laptop at the corner unwittingly send off a smirk seen by all at the table. He found something, maybe a pub crawl, a party, a gathering of some sort, disguised as academic but offering free drinks. Split second of jealousy and the rest of us go back to our notebooks, scribbling harder and faster than before. "We study hard and so should you," we try to say to the guy with the smirk...but then, everything goes back to normal. All six of us comes to a physical stop, our collective minds wondering what could be beyond the invisible confines of the table.
Half the time we get invites from some colleagues to do something, whether it be lunch, dinner, coffee, a movie, a drink, a day trip, or even something as ridiculous as shopping or a visit to an amusement park, there are hints of desperation in the invite. "I just want to be somewhere, anywhere other than the library, studying at some table with a bunch of strangers for hours everyday!" they seem to say. The destination or the activity no longer seemed to matter. Any excuse was good enough to escape the school.
Funny how I never felt so strongly about being stuck in the library back in undergrad years (even though I perhaps done much more of that then than now). Part of it may be the fact that we are all in a city as exciting as London. Or maybe LSE has never really bothered to instill a sense of school pride in her students than places like Yale tried to do with endless ideological brainwashing. Or I suppose alcohol was not that big of a factor as an American undergrad. Either way, the feeling of somehow being a "caged animal" at the LSE Library simply persist and refuse to go away...
"I am going out tonight, because I just finished a big assignment and don't have anything else due for another two weeks!" Every time I hear such a statement, I cannot help but consider it some sort of bragging coupled with unscrewing of some invisible pressure valve within the statement-maker. Well, here I am, sitting at the table and just done with a big assignment due in two weeks. Maybe I too need a mini-celebration of some sort. A blog post, on the desperate vanity of "going out," is good enough "going out" for me to release my pressure valve...
But they all do zone off, very inconspicuously. Their eyes are still on the books, journals, computer screens, but their minds are obviously somewhere else. Their eyes no longer keep moves along with the endless mesh-mash of words and sentences. Its like staring out of the window or the wall back in the classrooms of high school, only we here at the library table, perhaps because of the six others (plus however many at the adjacent tables) watching over the each of us constantly (so we tell ourselves), refuse to secretly embarrass ourselves by openly admitting loss of concentration.
It is these times that I envy the guy sitting at the corner, near the windows. He pulls open his laptop, and the eyes start moving more wildly than needed for reading an academic paper, and his typing becomes inconsistent short spurts, dubious for essay writing (barring the most creative and "brilliant" writers). Mundane entertainments of Facebook and email takes over, and the guy suddenly transports himself to a happier private space, much to the quiet dismay of the others, who can either continue the pattern of self-distraction or painfully ignore the signal by trying to toil in academic work even harder.
Yet, even as the quiet battle of concentration and embarrassment carries on at the six-person table in the Library, sometimes I feel that the six of us already established a Sixth Sense mental connection od some sort the moment we all sat down. The boredom and the annoyance with ending work are by all means communal, mutually felt, and understand. We all know we want to be somewhere else, but somehow manages (once in a while) fight back the temptations of doing something else to be here, at the studying table.
But the distractions just won't go away. The guy with the laptop at the corner unwittingly send off a smirk seen by all at the table. He found something, maybe a pub crawl, a party, a gathering of some sort, disguised as academic but offering free drinks. Split second of jealousy and the rest of us go back to our notebooks, scribbling harder and faster than before. "We study hard and so should you," we try to say to the guy with the smirk...but then, everything goes back to normal. All six of us comes to a physical stop, our collective minds wondering what could be beyond the invisible confines of the table.
Half the time we get invites from some colleagues to do something, whether it be lunch, dinner, coffee, a movie, a drink, a day trip, or even something as ridiculous as shopping or a visit to an amusement park, there are hints of desperation in the invite. "I just want to be somewhere, anywhere other than the library, studying at some table with a bunch of strangers for hours everyday!" they seem to say. The destination or the activity no longer seemed to matter. Any excuse was good enough to escape the school.
Funny how I never felt so strongly about being stuck in the library back in undergrad years (even though I perhaps done much more of that then than now). Part of it may be the fact that we are all in a city as exciting as London. Or maybe LSE has never really bothered to instill a sense of school pride in her students than places like Yale tried to do with endless ideological brainwashing. Or I suppose alcohol was not that big of a factor as an American undergrad. Either way, the feeling of somehow being a "caged animal" at the LSE Library simply persist and refuse to go away...
"I am going out tonight, because I just finished a big assignment and don't have anything else due for another two weeks!" Every time I hear such a statement, I cannot help but consider it some sort of bragging coupled with unscrewing of some invisible pressure valve within the statement-maker. Well, here I am, sitting at the table and just done with a big assignment due in two weeks. Maybe I too need a mini-celebration of some sort. A blog post, on the desperate vanity of "going out," is good enough "going out" for me to release my pressure valve...
whow u wrote alot!...
ReplyDeleteI have a long way to catch u lol
haha, just keep up the writing and you will be fine!
ReplyDelete