My friend Eric complains to me that he studies in his fraternity room all the time and has a hard time concentrating on his work. From the loud music to the yelling boys, it shouldn’t be a surprise that his fraternity house isn’t the best place for a study session.

However, lots of students choose to also study in the confines of their supposedly quiet dorm room, and even that’s not a smart decision for many reasons.

The obvious distractions begin with loud roommates or floormates. If your roommates don’t feel like studying, they could play loud death-metal music, practice their tennis grunts or bring friends over to make salsa. This will distract you from your study groove and may even tempt you to take breaks to join in on the fun, which you may not be able to afford.

Beyond your roommate, there are students above, below and to the sides of you in a dorm room. From the boys above you who like to play hockey in the halls, to the girl right next to you who continuously calls her boyfriend from Indiana to sob about how much she misses him, these scenarios aren’t constructive for your studying.

Also, dump your dorm desk. It is unusable; make a table out of it, or do what I did and convert it into a makeup station/dump zone for all of your clothes, papers and books.

The college desk is supposed to be piled high with anything and everything; it’s a rule of dorm life. In fact, even if you don’t make this a solid aesthetic choice, it is bound to happen over the course of a few weekends here on campus. So just try to study on the few inches of desk you have remaining and get back to me.

Your room has a bed as well. And at one point or another we have all tried to convince ourselves that we could study in it. It doesn’t work. Even if you don’t start to feel drowsy after the 10th page of that Political Science textbook, then you are at least sure to begin losing the intensity of your study pace. Or you may be like me and just decide to rest for a few minutes and end up falling asleep for two hours. This isn’t a fun situation to deal with, trust me.

Our dorm rooms are so accessible that to some it doesn’t make sense to study anywhere else. Eric, my stubborn friend, told me that he won’t leave his fraternity house out of convenience — he’s too lazy to bring his textbooks to the library.

However, libraries create a necessary separation between your personal life and academic life. Everyone at the library is getting their studying done, and being along with them helps create that motivating vibe that will push you to finish all your work.

In fact, doing activities in your bedroom that make you anxious about sleeping, such as finishing work or getting a head start on a project due next week, can hinder the bond between sleep and your bedroom according to the National Sleep Foundation. 

As college students, it is important to get as much sleep as possible. And if studying in your dorm room can obstruct that, then the library is definitely the way to go.

When it comes to being successful, some students may study better in a slightly noisy environment. In fact, in 2013 a study by our university revealed that the level of noise common in a café boosts productivity.

This campus is bursting with study spaces for group projects, independent work, quiet studying, social studying, late night studying etc. These options are open to you and are much more useful than a desk in your dorm room where distractions are galore.

So, I recommend that Eric, and all of you, my fellow readers, find a new spot to study if you have been using your dorm room. It might be the UGL, Espresso or even outside of the Union, but your dorm room should be reserved for sleeping and relaxing, and making your bed all the sweeter.

Leah is a sophomore in Media and FAA.

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