University’s not all about getting battered and eating kebabs you know. At some point you’re going to have to do some actual real-life work for the course that you’re trying to get a degree in. We know, we know boo-urns and all that but it’ll be worth it in the long run – promise!
Doing work for your course invariably involves spending a lot of your time in the university library – a place you will come to love and hate in equal measures. During your induction it’ll seem like a brave new world of learning; a hallowed sanctuary full of important and life-fulfilling knowledge just ready to be soaked up by your eager-to-learn sponge-like brain. Come April though, the place will start to lose some of its original appeal – mainly due to you spending more time within its walls than the pub, lecture halls, and your house put together.
Working in the library comes with its very own specific set of problems. Whether it’s chair thieves (buy yourself a bright pink jumper you don’t mind losing to use as a space-saving tool), the art of learning to eat a packet of crisps silently (you will never manage this although sucking them before chewing does help a little), or the time you waste plotting the murder of the group of giggling girls that insist on sitting together in the history section (don’t get bitter and possibly homocidal, just be a dick and report them), it’s a tough old world to navigate. Here’s a few things to buy that’ll help you out in the long run.
This coffee thermos means you’ll never ruin your laptop
It’s cool they subsidise the coffee in the library café and all that but still, at £1.10 a pop, it’ll add up fast. Plus, you being the clumsy oaf you are, you’re bound to knock the flimsy paper cup holding it all over your laptop. Probably the day before you have to hand in a really important essay.
This thermos not only means you can bring your coffee in from home but also, with three sillicone seals between the coffee and the outside world, you’d have to try really hard to get any liquid out of this one unless you really want to.
This lock means you don’t have to make any library friends
Having library friends is handy for one thing and one thing only: looking after your laptop when you go to the loo. Other than that they’re distracting, bad influences, and eventually the sole reason you ended up getting a 2:2 instead of a 2:1.
This lock plugs into your lock port (the oval-shaped hole on your computer’s side) and secures your laptop to the desk making library friends null and void. You might be lonely as hell, but you’ll certainly be productive.
This Berocca means you’ll be able to stay that bit longer – even with a hangover
Thanks to the amount of rubbish you’re probably doing to your body every day in unversity (chips overload, social smoking that’s veering into a full-blown habit, not to mention the copious amounts of alcohol), you should probably be having a Berocca every day anyways (or at least the cheap Sainsbury’s knock-offs). There’s no way you’re getting your daily vitamin allowance from eating pesto and pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This stuff’s got guarana in it, which is basically natural caffeine. Pop one when you’re starting to get drowsy towards the end of the day and see if you can go on for an extra hour.
The portable laptop charger that will give you no excuse to leave
If you’re unlucky enough to have a uni library built in the days when people still actually used them for books, then you’re probably in a constant battle with other library goers over who gets to use the one power socket (that’s also got to charge the sole printer).
This portable laptop charger means that when you run low on power, instead of having to break your flow and head home to juice it up again, just plug this guy in and get a couple more hours use before calling it a day.
These headphones will stop you getting distracted
Other than library friends, the number one cause of failing to do your work is absolutely down to other people making noise that they absolutely shouldn’t be. Sure they might be whispering but when you’re trying to get your head around Foucault, they might as well be standing on your table, loudspeaker in hand shouting, ‘YOU’RE GOING TO FAIL UNIVERSITY’ in your pathetic face.
You can’t ever shut them up, so shut them out instead with these noise-cancelling headphones. If you can’t listen to music without getting distracted, try Noisili, the site that lets you create your very own form of background noise to work to. We’re currently listening to ‘thunderstorm’ with a touch of ‘crackling fire’.
Follow Jess on Twitter @jess_commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.