Cut off.

(http://library.depaul.edu/About/hours.aspx#)

There are a few things that really annoy me about our University. Don’t get me wrong I think we have an excellent institution with lots of amazing professors. But I think most of you felt the stress from midterms for the past two weeks. I know I did. I was swamped with take home exams, in class exams, and group projects. Living with 3 other girls in my apartment there is no way to get any of my work done on time. I have to resort to study at locations on campus.

This brings me to my first point. Why do the libraries at DePaul close so early?! Especially during midterms week! They want us to do well but they provide us with no resourceful places to work. The loop library closes at 10 pm mon-thurs and even earlier over the weekend. Most students do a lot of their work over the weekend and especially on a Sunday night, but they don’t even have the option to go to the library. I do understand that the loop library is located in downtown Chicago, and might be harder to keep open later, but what about Lincoln Park’s library? Well it’s not much better.

I had just gotten out of one of my night classes in the loop, and it was around 9 pm. There was no way I was going to go to the loop library and start my midterm for only an hour. So I took the train back to Lincoln Park assuming that the library would be open extra late for midterms week. I get started on my take home midterm, and am in a great environment. It was quiet, I was cursing away at my paper. Then it hits mid-night and all the lights in the library turn off. I start to panic that my computer would shut down so I save my work, and find out the library was now closing. I thought to myself, really, are you serious, you can’t stay open an extra couple of hours for the students during midterms? Nope. The library closed at its normal time 12 am. First of all I know a lot of other campuses that provide their students with a 24-hour library to do their work (when it’s not even midterms), and we can’t even get that during midterms. I just wish that DePaul would take it into consideration that we are students and its hard for us to get work done in a dorm or apartment, and that we stay up late so we need a place to work in that is open late. Please stop cutting us off, and let us work.