“Ladies and gentlemen, the library will be closing in 15 minutes, please send your last print jobs to the printer.”The library is not only a nerdy place to hang out, it’s also a really cool and social place to be during exams.
As sad as this might sound, I’ve met many of my friends there. The library becomes so full of students from all faculties around exam time that even though you might not know anyone at the beginning, I guarantee you will by the end of your exams.
And us ‘library people’ all start following the same trends after a while, like sheep. You study for about 10 minutes and then look up and around you, watching to see who is walking by and who is making ‘that noise’! As your eyes sweep across the room, you look at the person sitting across from you in the eye and then immediately change the features on your face to pretend that you’re in fact having a deep moment of thought! And anything that happens around you is exciting, no matter how silly or stupid it is, as long as it gives you a temporary ‘reprieve’ from your reader. And then this cycle starts all over again 10 minutes later!
Often in the library you hear this ‘clak-clak’ sound coming closer. It’s not someone trying to be funny and it’s not some kid making stupid noises . it’s a pair of shoes! It’s so incredibly annoying to hear someone with heels walking around the library making this irritating sound, yet the fact remains that almost every girl wears ‘non-library friendly’ shoes! And the worst of it all is when you look up to see who that lady is, only to find out that it’s a guy! I mean, guys’ shoes aren’t supposed to make this noise in the first place!
There should be a shoe inspection at the library door, like the one they use for the Sports Centre’s gym floor. It would make studying much more pleasant, with less distractions.
But then I suppose that would be unfair, especially to the TU’s ladies, because the hallways of the library often look like the cat-walk of a fashion show! Many of the girls there seem to dress up so fine just to go and study, and the guys often do the same. “Damn, that girl is lookin’ good” tends to dominate most guys’ library conversations during breaks, and “Oh my god he is staring at me again!” is the magic sentence for the ladies.
And then, in the middle of all of them, I see my perfect girl: Long blond hair, perfect tall figure, amazing smile, gorgeous eyes and a lovely little skirt! I’m thinking, “Man, she’s lookin’ fine!” And that girl will stay in my mind all night! I don’t know your name, I don’t know what you study, I don’t even know if you’re Dutch or not, but I feel like a sixth grader all over again with a secret crush!
I usually take a break during dinnertime and head home for a nice meal and a change of scenery. On this night, as I was biking home, still trying to absorb what I’d been reading for the past 6 hours (or rather that hot library girl I’d been starring at for the past 6 hours!), someone suddenly jumps out from behind a tree on Mekelweg and stops me. It’s a policeman. He immediately grabs his little notebook and starts writing, and then asks me for my ID. I don’t know much Dutch, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out when you’re getting a fine! Great I’m thinking, this is exactly what I need now. At first I thought I was getting fined for biking in the wrong place (I don’t know why I was on the sidewalk!), but it turns out I had no headlight. “But, but…but wait, Sir, I have one, look!” And show him that I have a light. But how can I explain to him that it’s not my fault, that I simply forgot to turn it on because I was lost in thoughts of my hot library girl! I can’t, I don’t…to a cop who already thinks he’s being ‘nice’ by giving a cash-strapped student a ‘korting’ (discount). And besides, I was pretty sure the ‘hot library chick made me do it’ line of self-defense wouldn’t work, not even on a Dutch cop!
So, listen you good-looking library girls, as much as we guys may like it, you not only make it damn hard for us to study with you looking so fine, you can cost us poor bastards money as well! But don’t stop, because without you most of us guys would study harder, stay at home, and probably pass our exams on the first try. And that, we foreigners soon learn, ain’t the way to do things at a Dutch university, because then you get labeled a nerd!
“Ladies and gentlemen, the library is now closing, please be so kind to turn off your computer and leave the building!”
The next ‘Tarek’s Diary’ column will be published in Delta 09.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the library will be closing in 15 minutes, please send your last print jobs to the printer.”
The library is not only a nerdy place to hang out, it’s also a really cool and social place to be during exams. As sad as this might sound, I’ve met many of my friends there. The library becomes so full of students from all faculties around exam time that even though you might not know anyone at the beginning, I guarantee you will by the end of your exams.
And us ‘library people’ all start following the same trends after a while, like sheep. You study for about 10 minutes and then look up and around you, watching to see who is walking by and who is making ‘that noise’! As your eyes sweep across the room, you look at the person sitting across from you in the eye and then immediately change the features on your face to pretend that you’re in fact having a deep moment of thought! And anything that happens around you is exciting, no matter how silly or stupid it is, as long as it gives you a temporary ‘reprieve’ from your reader. And then this cycle starts all over again 10 minutes later!
Often in the library you hear this ‘clak-clak’ sound coming closer. It’s not someone trying to be funny and it’s not some kid making stupid noises . it’s a pair of shoes! It’s so incredibly annoying to hear someone with heels walking around the library making this irritating sound, yet the fact remains that almost every girl wears ‘non-library friendly’ shoes! And the worst of it all is when you look up to see who that lady is, only to find out that it’s a guy! I mean, guys’ shoes aren’t supposed to make this noise in the first place!
There should be a shoe inspection at the library door, like the one they use for the Sports Centre’s gym floor. It would make studying much more pleasant, with less distractions.
But then I suppose that would be unfair, especially to the TU’s ladies, because the hallways of the library often look like the cat-walk of a fashion show! Many of the girls there seem to dress up so fine just to go and study, and the guys often do the same. “Damn, that girl is lookin’ good” tends to dominate most guys’ library conversations during breaks, and “Oh my god he is staring at me again!” is the magic sentence for the ladies.
And then, in the middle of all of them, I see my perfect girl: Long blond hair, perfect tall figure, amazing smile, gorgeous eyes and a lovely little skirt! I’m thinking, “Man, she’s lookin’ fine!” And that girl will stay in my mind all night! I don’t know your name, I don’t know what you study, I don’t even know if you’re Dutch or not, but I feel like a sixth grader all over again with a secret crush!
I usually take a break during dinnertime and head home for a nice meal and a change of scenery. On this night, as I was biking home, still trying to absorb what I’d been reading for the past 6 hours (or rather that hot library girl I’d been starring at for the past 6 hours!), someone suddenly jumps out from behind a tree on Mekelweg and stops me. It’s a policeman. He immediately grabs his little notebook and starts writing, and then asks me for my ID. I don’t know much Dutch, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out when you’re getting a fine! Great I’m thinking, this is exactly what I need now. At first I thought I was getting fined for biking in the wrong place (I don’t know why I was on the sidewalk!), but it turns out I had no headlight. “But, but…but wait, Sir, I have one, look!” And show him that I have a light. But how can I explain to him that it’s not my fault, that I simply forgot to turn it on because I was lost in thoughts of my hot library girl! I can’t, I don’t…to a cop who already thinks he’s being ‘nice’ by giving a cash-strapped student a ‘korting’ (discount). And besides, I was pretty sure the ‘hot library chick made me do it’ line of self-defense wouldn’t work, not even on a Dutch cop!
So, listen you good-looking library girls, as much as we guys may like it, you not only make it damn hard for us to study with you looking so fine, you can cost us poor bastards money as well! But don’t stop, because without you most of us guys would study harder, stay at home, and probably pass our exams on the first try. And that, we foreigners soon learn, ain’t the way to do things at a Dutch university, because then you get labeled a nerd!
“Ladies and gentlemen, the library is now closing, please be so kind to turn off your computer and leave the building!”
The next ‘Tarek’s Diary’ column will be published in Delta 09.
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