Law Library v Silence

Among law students, or at least the people at Schulich that I study with, booking a basement library room is never just about studying. It always starts that way: textbooks out, laptops plugged into the nearest outlet, and someone suggesting that we "Lock in for the next four hours."

Within five minutes, someone’s asking what the new Crumbl cookie lineup is this week. Another friend steps into the hallway, staring at the moot plaques and trying to figure out how a 2004 team from Halifax apparently won the Nigeria moot (it was Niagara).

One friend’s music is leaking through their headphones as they type at an intensely fast speed. Across from them, another is using exactly two fingers to type, the rest of their digits hovering midair, all the while complaining about how their March Madness bracket got cooked in the first round.

I tell myself I’m here to study, but most of the time, I’m just watching it all unfold.

Someone’s laughing too loudly. Someone swears they just spotted Sopinka (the basement’s resident rodent, named by the law school as part of the infamous “Don’t feed Sopinka” no-eating policy) while somebody else announces they’re “just taking a five-minute break to use the fourth-floor bathroom,” which inevitably turns into forty-five.

It’s strange how we talk more in the library than anywhere else. We come here because we know we have work to do and think the quiet will keep us in check, but somehow, the conversations are constant and spontaneous.

If you put us all in a restaurant, we’d probably talk less than we do here. Maybe it’s because outside the walls of Weldon, silence feels like something you’re supposed to fill. But the law library already feels full with the constant stream of white lights, the low-level panic of deadlines, and the perpetual shuffle of people navigating the library stairs to use bathrooms that always have mysterious puddles on the floor. Here, it’s easier to talk.

We tell ourselves we’ll start after one more story, after one more ‘Would-you-rather?’ But the truth is, none of us mind not getting much done. There’s a rhythm to it now with our open laptops and an unspoken agreement that this is less about studying and more about being together. By the end of the night, someone’s eyes will be half-closed, someone’s laptop will have died, and someone’s whiteboard will be peppered with hangman drawings that were supposed to be notes. But no matter what, we still pack up feeling a little bit lighter.

We're not the quietest group in the library (far from it) but maybe that's the point. Some people learn best in silence.

We’re just not those people.