When I came back to campus this semester, I walked along the bricks to find where all of my classrooms would be. I happened to stroll past the library door at D.H. Hill and unexpectedly found a sign with different times than last year. With D.H. Hill’s new and improved hours, the main campus library for NC State students is now open 24 hours Mondays – Thursdays. I’m completely supportive of this change; it’s great that students will now always be able to access a respectable place to study, a place that is essential to the success of all students.
With countless distractions readily available in the year 2015, it’s tough for college students not to get sidetracked. Admit it. When’s the last time you opened up your assignment on Moodle and finished it, intro to conclusion, without opening one other tab on Safari or skipping a Pandora song? Can’t remember? Don’t worry; neither can I. Facebook, email, the latest episode of whatever show you decided to binge-watch this week on Netflix — the list goes on. And those are just some of the distractions you create. Roommates blare their new favorite song, your phone buzzes every four seconds with calls from your parents and texts from your best friend back home, the microwave beeps with your suitemates’ popcorn that smells so good that all you want to do now is watch a movie.
But no, you have an English paper due tomorrow, a biology test the next day and two WebAssigns due the day after (both of which you haven’t started). Oh, and about seven other things. And that’s just for this week. Unfortunately, you have no choice other than to open that textbook to start studying.
Sometimes getting productive studying done in a residence hall is nearly impossible. Even with a focused mind and the willingness to put the effort in, we face too many variable factors that prevent us from completing essential tasks successfully and in a reasonable time frame.
Students need a quiet and accessible place to study, no matter what time it is. Last year, I found myself in D.H. Hill several times when the warning bell went off at 11:30 p.m. I’m not one to procrastinate, but even for me, sometimes that’s when the assignment just gets started after a full day of classes and dinner and club meetings. I would have to find another space to work diligently, and most of the time, I couldn’t find one. So, the homework that didn’t get finished before the warning bell never turned out quite as well.
When students are at the library, they are there because they care about their schoolwork and want to study. And last year, they literally got kicked out when the library closed. It’s like telling the students they can’t study anymore and that maybe they really should go back and get distracted by that popcorn. A school preventing students from studying? Nobody wants that. Plus, let’s not forget about group projects or study groups. Meeting up with some friends to practice some calculus problems or brainstorm ideas for a paper is a great way to interact with fellow Wolfpackers and learn at the same time. But when it’s dark at night and you have to walk all the way across campus to your room that’s hardly big enough for just one person, it doesn’t seem like the best idea anymore. D.H. Hill’s study rooms with screens and whiteboards can now be used more often by all of the students; they provide an engaging, focused area to knock out those assignments.
I’m certainly not the only one excited about D.H. Hill’s new hours. Once the students take advantage of the library’s more flexible schedule, I hope it becomes clear to the NC State community that the library should always be open to students who are willing to work and who strive to study as best they can.
