The city I come from doesn’t really have a library anymore. Three summers ago, a flood came through and swept away our entire downtown, including the main library. The city struggled to get its feet back on the ground.
As they reestablished government facilities elsewhere, the issue of the library was raised. The town government knew they had to do something, but they didn’t seem to want to exert a great effort. And so they moved all the dry books from the first library to our other, more rejected library – in a storefront on the ground floor of a rundown mall.
I went to that library once, looked at their 12 books, and sighed with disappointment.
Needless to say, I was excited to have a real library when I came to college. I would soak up all that the library had to offer me, and love every second – or so I thought.
That fantasy lasted about five minutes.
I have spent maybe six combined afternoons there over the past year. But all that changed two nights ago, when I got my Econ midterm back (yikes!) and subsequently decided to stay the night in the library … or at least until they kicked me out. I have heard student leaders spend many an hour soaking up knowledge in the library and hoped to receive the same wisdom.
I sat in 5 North from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. Certainly, some sort of latent economic knowledge in the library walls could help me from failing the course. As I sat, I discovered something: the library is really boring.
I tried to do homework, but the buzzing from the fluorescent light above me was distracting. I tried to take a study break by watching The Office, but passersby gave me snarky stares. I even tried to take a little desk nap, like I hear people do during finals times, but that was too weird. All I could do was sit and re-read the sign forbidding me from eating in the library as I munched on a cookie from my backpack.
Ultimately, the night ended even more depressingly than it began. When I saw the cleaning ladies make the rounds, I got up and tried to befriend them. They did not want to be my friend. Finally, around 3:10 a.m., I was told to leave, and then followed to the elevator by a nice, elderly woman. I was still clueless about economics.
But it was all the same, because I didn’t want to spend any longer staring at the green hallway carpet or being stifled by the silence around me. Maybe I don’t need libraries after all. Maybe Cedar Rapids had it right all along.
