Choosing a place to study is like picking the right pillow. If it doesn’t feel right, no amount of tossing, turning, re-shaping, fluffing, or flipping will make it work. But if you’re going to find a good place to do your long hours of homework and study (about 2-5 hours, per class, per week, yah that’s not a typo) then having a thorough catalog from which to shop would be useful.

The 2012-13 Catalog of Places to Study

Obvious choices

• Your dorm room
• Your friend’s room
• Your dining hall
• Your lounge
• Your computer cluster

Less obvious choices

• The lounge in someone else’s dorm where you don’t know as many people
• The picnic tables around your dorm (much more productive than laying out on Wilbur field, vastly underutilized)

Not-very-well-kept-secrets (where you can be around people but not necessarily interact)

• CoHo – Good if you like the hustle and bustle of people to keep you focused, but can get a little overwhelming around lunch or dinner time
  

  Arrillaga Dining Commons
• Nitery – Rooms can be reserved and it’s usually a pretty chill spot to study without distraction
• 

  Nitery
  Arrillaga Dining Commons – Aside from the dining area, Arrillaga dining commons also has study rooms you can reserve when
  studying for a big test.
  

  Arbuckle Dining Pavilion
• Arbuckle Dining Pavilion Located in the center of the GSB, is like an upscale Tresidder with lots of space to spread out, but with plenty of people to keep you alert if you like ambient noise in the background.

When you want BIG quiet

• Bender Room (Green Library Bing Wing) – Great choice if you need a quiet place do reading surrounded by ton of books and comfy chairs.
• 

  Law Library
  

  Bender Room
  Law Library – Quiet and a great place to go if you don’t want to run into friends while studying. Unless you happen to be friends with a lot of law students. Then maybe it’s time for the Art & Architecture library.
• The Bing library at Alumni Center – One of the best kept secrets on campus. Around the corner from the Alumni Center entrance, there’s a library where students can study unperturbed among stacks of stately books.

When you want eerie desolation

• Buildings in the Quad – popular buildings like 200 or Wallenberg are often open past 5, which means many of the classrooms are open and available for use if you need a place to study without disturbance. The most popular building for after hours study is still bldg 200, the classrooms are open  M-F until 10pm and Sat and Sun until 7pm. Another option is building 260  open M-F until 9pm and closed Sat and Sun.
• The stacks –  walk to the far wall of the stacks in Green library, look left, then right, and you’ll see them: single, wooden desks at either end, the desert islands of academia. And that’s it: you, your work, a desk, a lamp and an electrical outlet. Get cracking.

The lonely road to peaceful studying

But remember: wherever you go, there you are. So if you’re expecting that the physical location of where you study will somehow eradicate your ambivalence about the work, your fear of failure, your complaints about the course, your preoccupation with your new relationship, or your exceptionally large sleep debt, it won’t.

But hey, maybe it’ll help!

As always, stay calm and stay tuned.

Next week: New interests, new directions