Maybe it’s broken. Maybe you’ve left your charger on the kitchen table. Maybe you’re weighed down like a packhorse and the extra bag is one thing too many today. Whatever the reason, it’s 2pm on a Thursday afternoon and you find yourself without a laptop, desperately wandering around the library looking for a computer. We’ve all been there.
You start off on A floor, but, realistically, you knew this is futile. No hard feelings. So, you clamber up to B floor… and that’s where the panic begins. There. Are. No. Free. Computers. Anywhere.
You look to your left, but all you can see are swarms of productive people, smugly typing away. On your right, are a collection of poor, desolate, abandoned notebooks, cruelly discarded while their selfish owners pop to Go Burrito.
After several minutes of frantic pacing up and down, you have to admit to yourself that B floor is a lost cause – you brace yourself for the hike up to C Floor. You get up to C Floor and at first you feel lost in this foreign land, normally reserved for silence-seeking endurance athletes. But gradually, you get your bearings. There’s bound to be a computer up here, right? Only the most dedicated of students – or a complete maniac – chooses to climb up all this way.
But alas, to your sorrow, it becomes apparent that there are no free computers up here either. Every single monitor has someone sitting in front of it.
You’re just starting to admit defeat, berating yourself for not running fast enough from George Fox, when a realisation hits you. Some of these people, sitting comfortably in front of a computer, are not actually using their computer. In fact, their computer is switched off. Rather, they’re sitting in front of a computer… using a laptop!
How could they? These laptop-using computer-hoggers could sit anywhere in the library; why on earth have they chosen to sit in front of what is essentially a sacred and scarce resource? They’re only after the exceedingly comfortable, black spinny chair! What mean, mean people.
I understand that in an increasingly technologically advanced world, the majority of students now have access to a laptop or tablet of their own. But this is not the case for everyone. Whether it be due to monetary constraints, a lack of relevant software, or simply personal preference, some people require the use of a computer. With there only being around 250 computers in the library, serving a student body of over 12,000 students, computers are at a premium. For this reason, in my opinion anyway, all library computers should be a laptop-free zone.
So, next time you and your laptop go to plop yourselves down in front of a library computer, just pause for a moment and think about what you’re doing. Spare a thought for us less-fortunate, laptop-free, desperately searching souls. You wouldn’t want to be a laptop-using computer-hogger, would you now?
