Silence isn’t always golden

Silence is deafening. The complete absence of sound can become so frightening that the slightest movement, the slightest hum, can fill your ears with noise.

For the purposes of studying, we choose to escape noisy environments because we find we can study more effectively in quieter settings.

Ironically, silence can be the most annoying sound, often distracting us from our studies and turning our focus on the noise around us.

College study rooms and libraries are in fact the noisiest places to study because normally inaudible sounds incessantly nag us.

“Every time I go to Powell I feel awkward because it’s so quiet, and any sound I make, I feel like people give me a dirty look,” said Theresa Sun, a first-year pre-communication studies student.

“One day I was wearing flip-flops, which make noise when I walk, so as soon as I entered Powell all eyes were on me,” Sun said.

While noticing people walking in the room at all times may call for extreme attentiveness, there are more common scenarios that may bug us.

We are all familiar with the typical things that nag us in study rooms: the loud sniffer, the person who answers his phone, the typist with long fingernails, the loud chewer, the burper, the person who whispers to herself.

I’m sure you don’t need to be obsessive-compulsive to notice these distractions, but things just seem to take a turn when everything starts to ring in your ears like nails on a chalkboard.

Kelly O’Neil contributed an article to the Associated Content Web site that said one of the most effective ways for college students to study is to get out of their dorms and go to a study room or library where there are less distractions and noise.

“Bring only the stuff you plan on studying or working on, and stay there for a set amount of (productive) time. That way when you get back to the dorm you can have some fun, without it distracting you from your studies,” O’Neil recommended.

I typically like to study in the Dungeon, a room located next to the De Neve dining hall. This is probably the quietest study room I have ever been to at UCLA. However, there are always those nights where its perfect record of silence is broken.

My friends and I decided to stay up late and study for our midterms in the Dungeon. As we settled our stuff down, we were shocked by the amount of noise that night.

There was a group of about six or seven people, talking and laughing loudly and obviously not studying.

They weren’t even whispering, which is a pretty clear study room unspoken rule. One of the girls in this group kept talking about the effects of their nightly Bruin Café caffeine fix, and I heard an occasional “thug life” reference from two of the guys. Almost everyone in the Dungeon seemed extremely annoyed, including myself.

Things just kept getting weirder as the night progressed. A guy came in with a box of Late Night De Neve, took a bite from his burger, sat on a couch and knocked out.

His loud breathing turned into heavy snoring, which was amusing at first but eventually became distracting. He woke up every so often to look around the room, only to fall back asleep.

My opinion about study rooms, particularly the Dungeon, has changed completely. Silence is not only deafening but brings out the strangest qualities in people. Some people are even abnormally startled by the slightest noise.

“I was in the Dungeon in dead silence and this one girl came up to me and told me to turn my iPod down,” said Cody Geib, a first-year pre-communication studies student. “I thought she was anal because it’s outrageous. It’s not like I’m jamming my headphones down her ears ““ it’s only a small background noise.”

People can become scary in these quiet environments, making silence even more frightening. Study room etiquette is not a difficult concept to grasp. Being quiet and respectful of others in the room are basic considerations.

However, people may be unaware of their annoying behaviors in silence. In fact, I wonder if the girl sitting across the room from me in the Dungeon right now can hear how loud she is whispering or notice the few people glancing in her direction to signal how irritating she is.

I just learned that loud whispering is perhaps worse than actually talking.

When different study methods, pet peeves and bad habits come together in a room with preexisting noise, they are easy to ignore. But when all of these things occur in dead silence, you may want to bring a pair of earplugs.

If you need to vent about annoying study room experiences, e-mail Ghoogassian at [email protected] general comments to [email protected].