The Joy of Studying

There are April days in Philadelphia so nice that studying is physically impossible. The days where you can see people grilling outside and sunning themselves on rooftops. And then there are days like today, when the fog cuts visibility in half and not a soul can be seen outside. I prefer these days during finals though, because studying is ... vital.

Which brings up the question of how to study, and where. A lot of students (my roommates included) LOVE the basement of Van Pelt - it's open 24 hours and has Mark's Cafe with coffee and food to keep you going. I am not one of those people. I tried it once and only lasted about 2 hours. There was too much nervous study energy floating around for me to just chill out and punch out my paper. Though my roommates say that same energy motivates them to keep their head down and get to work.

So I'm normally a study-in-my-room kind of gal. Until I had the crazy 48 hours of just a week ago when a combined 35 pages of brilliance were due back to back to back. To get it all done, I found the upstairs study carrels of Van Pelt tucked at the end of each row of stacks. And I loved it. You can't see anyone, they can't see you, and you get vertigo if you look down the row for too long, so you just keep your head down and get your work down. It was near bliss.

But this week I've returned to my dependable desk in my Harrison room. And with this fog, I can't even see planes taking off and landing to distract me.