Fifth Floor
By Giovanna Hughes
Contributing Writer
Picture this: You have two essays due on Tuesday, along with an exam tomorrow and another on Friday, neither of which you have really studied for. Your phone is buzzing with texts from the group project chat, and you still need to finish your portion before you meet with your classmates later tonight. Of course, you can’t forget those 200-something pages of reading either.
Point is, you are the average St. Olaf student at any point beyond the first two weeks of the semester.
I often struggle with the question of where to study. Each study spot has its pros and cons, and it can be difficult to find a location where you can truly lock in. However, after having tested almost every place on campus, I can guarantee that the fifth floor of Rolvaag is one of the best places to do just that.
Silence does wonders for productivity. At first, it can feel depressing studying in silence, but I’ve found that once you get past those first 20 or so minutes, you can easily get into the zone and concentrate. This state is very hard to achieve on the third floor, because it can easily be broken by all the constant noise and motion.
I have often had the experience of studying with a friend on a loud floor, and neither of us actually end up getting work done because we would keep starting conversations. As nice as it is to talk, it is better to do your work efficiently so that you can actually hang out later. This is another reason why the fifth floor is preferable, as you and your friend are forced to actually focus on your work, because if you talk, you will be everyone’s enemy.
There are many other reasons, in addition to the silence, that the top floor is truly great. It has a fair amount of open space to walk around, which is quite nice for five-minute study breaks. It also does not often have many people, which means there are always open tables and study rooms — which is not always the case on the third floor. There is always an available space where you can focus on that mountain of homework.
Overall, the fifth floor is clearly the superior choice for anyone who wants to be the most productive they’ve ever been.
Loud floor equals best floor
By Jacob Rozell
Visual Director
I read “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy as a first year. Anyone familiar with the title knows that it’s a very hard read. The story follows a father and son in the apocalypse, just trying to carry on when all hope seems lost. I couldn’t read the book often, and only really found time when I was in the library with my peers. When I would finish my homework faster than my friends, but didn’t want to leave them quite yet, because we all still had that first year move-as-a-pack mentality.
So time and time again, I would find myself laying on the beanbags or sprawled horizontally in the armchair, reading passages from my book. The strongest motif of “The Road” is the kind of invisible notion of the “human spirit,” which manifests itself in the repeating quote “carry the fire.” For as nice of a message as that is, the book is by all metrics, incredibly grim. To read it alone would be terrible. I promise, this has something to do with the library.
But, as I was reading it, I couldn’t stop myself from reading out loud, to my table of budding musicians and scientists. I would read sentences or small passages, and in those little ways, I felt further from the apocalypse of “The Road,” and closer to the fire that McCarthy was writing about. With every quote and reading session under the fluorescent lights of the loud floor, I got closer and closer to my community.
Was I ever particularly productive on the loud floor? No. But did I make more friends, create more networks, and spread more literature? I think so. Now more than ever, we need each other. Now more than ever, we should be asking ourselves, are Liberal Arts Colleges for productivity, or community? I choose to carry the fire. All the way to the high-top tables on the third floor.
