As the dreaded finals approach us, I would like to send a shout out to the kind person who decided he was too good for a cubicle or table in the third floor reading room of Kelvin Smith library. Thank you, d-bag, for taking the group study room and making it your own personal lounge space.

In all honesty, the library has to be one of the most bizarre places on any college campus, but especially here at Case Western.

Take, for example, the librarian who didn’t get the memo that he works in a library. If you have ever felt the need to study on the first floor, do not get too comfortable because it seems like he wants everyone to overhear his conversations.

If the loud librarian annoyed you, then I can’t even imagine how you feel about the constant use of the elevator to get to the second and third floor. Every thirty seconds I feel like I’m listening to the end of a Southwest Airlines commercial. And, how about the recent searches being projected on the wall over the elevators? I’m not sure what it’s trying to tell me, but it’s both mesmerizing and annoying at the same time.

Or, how about the student fixtures, err people I mean, at the study desks on the first floor? These people have molded their bodies into the seats and have a vast array of coffee, soda, energy drinks, and snacks to last them the semester.

Now that finals are coming up, I have decided to try to avoid the library at peak times. In my experience, the library becomes more of a social scene with everyone there to study during finals than an actual study area.

Think about it: there’s not a moment during midterms or finals when you end up talking to someone about nothing in order to procrastinate. Instead of a reading room, it becomes a talking room and the whole need to leave the dorm just became a moot point.

The third floor reading room could be the Case Western circus. When you walk in, it is apparently essential that you walk around the entire floor to get a lay of the land. I don’t think people intend to sit down on this first walk-through, but they want to see what’s available and who’s there. Then, after you realize that the group study rooms are taken and the tables are full (which is always true, why even try looking?), you resign yourself to a lonely personal studying cubicle with lame lighting.

Sadly, our friend without benefits, Kelvin Smith, also did a poor job decorating his large, prison-like academic center. If you weren’t told the structure was a library, your first thought would probably be insane asylum. The dinky sculpture on the first floor doesn’t compare to the random campus artwork, and the portraits of dead men adorning every room create a morbid feeling – especially late at night.

Regardless of Kelvin Smith’s odd quirks, he is still our most dependable 24-hour friend, and luckily he’ll be here again this year to move his stacks for research and to hold our hand during those treacherous all-nighters.