As I sit in my house library late Saturday night listening to the drunken revelry outside, I am faced with two very frightening dilemmas. One, I am about to be kicked out of the library in less than an hour and I am nowhere close to finishing my problem sets or with cramming for midterms. Two, how do I complain about this in the Independent without sounding like a total dork?

Here's how I resolve my second dilemma. I figure, in the generally dorky world of science and math concentrators, there still exists two conceptions of "cool." One can be cool by having a life outside of classes, at least on weekend nights. Tried that, and failed. Another way to be cool is to portray yourself as super-ultra hardcore, so that your peers respect you as an intense mathematical machine; in much the same way they respect a TI-89. I will give this alternative method of coolness a shot.

I really really need a 24-hour library. I am sure that there are other students who share my needs, and if mentioning them makes my argument stronger, then yes, other people need libraries too. But this is about me. I am not a genius. I'm taking classes this year that I can't handle. I live with people (wonderful people, dormmates who are reading) who are social and who like bizarre music whether they are drunk or sober. They show up at my door with Easy Mac and expect two hours of discussion on the merits of punk bands and Tai Chi. Therefore, I need a place to get a way at three in the morning to study.

Never mind that other top colleges such as Stanford and Dartmouth have at least one library open around the clock. Even CUNY, the City University of New York, has a 24-hour library. I have friends who smoke pot with Alzheimer-causing aluminum soda can bongs who go to CUNY. Should they have the crazy idea to study in a library on a Saturday night, they can. I, on the other hand, have to go back to my messy, noisy, and distracting room.

Opponents may argue that it would be very expensive to open a library for 24 hours, and that it would harm the environment by wasting electricity. The environment...how precious. This is about me, not the environment. Furthermore, Harvard is loaded. Others may point out that I could just as well find an empty room somewhere. True, I could go to an empty classroom inside Science Center and entomb myself, alone, confined by four white walls and a steel soundproof door, and study. Having such security in an unsafe world would certainly do much for my waning sanity.

Moreover, Harvard is structured so that I can pick up dental dam, lubricant, and get sex counseling at any time of the night. Meanwhile, my hours for a statistics problem set are limited to daylight. Clearly, Harvard has its priorities straight.

I would come up with even better reasons for why we (and I) deserve a 24-hour library. However, the librarian is now upon me, politely asking me to pack up.



Kelly Shue '06 is an Applied Math major in Leverett House. Did you know that the word "dork" was originally slang for a whale's penis? In which case, Kelly Shue is not actually a dork.



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