It came as a surprise to many of my friends that I waited until the last week of my senior year to hole up in Tisch Library for the first time. It's not that I've never been immersed in Tisch culture — I've met people for coffee in it; I've used its printers; I've rented its DVDs; I've taken classes in it; I've made out in its book stacks; I've smoked on top of it; I even, to my dismay, once saw someone in the back room of its media center jerking off behind his computer in the dark, probably (hopefully) thinking he was not in plain sight of those walking by its roof.
But my relationship with Tisch Library was always sort of a Giving Tree relationship — it gave to me, and I took. I never thought to sit down in one of its chairs and keep it company.
Until now. On the whole, what I gathered from this experiment was more than I had expected. I came for a few hours of study, and I got a glimpse into a world in miniature, a strange culture with its own rituals and mores, all contained within the giant, white brick walls donated to Tufts by Jonathan M. Tisch but entirely separated from them. As an outsider, I was able to observe its subcultures objectively.
Tour with me: Walk in, turn right, and you'll find the Tower Café, where students drop by for caffeine or sit down to flirt with their TAs and professors, facilitated by the university's free-coffee-for-students-with-professors policy. A decent studying venue if you like loud background noise you can drown out or if you want to spy on people walking down ProRow through the windows. In both cases, beware: While the Tower is a part of the library, it is not conceptualized as such, and your presence there will be understood as your wanting to talk to people. Musicless headphones are a must if you plan on getting things done.
Moving out of Tower, you'll find several students sprawled on armchairs in the hallway leading from the cafe to the library's main atrium. They are either on the phone or part of a fringe subculture I don't yet understand.
Turning right and right again, you have the group study area, equivalent to the building's nightclub. Here, you'll find pickup artists, socializing and music coming from iPods whose owners don't realize their headphones aren't plugged in all the way. This area is not as loud as Tower; it is louder. And the people who come here are more interested in watching YouTube videos and each other than working. Good for study breaks.
Returning to the main atrium and heading down the stairs, you are faced with a decision. Turn right if you are either really loud or a shut-in and therefore need your own tiny room within the library, or if you have to pee. But really, turn left, make a U-turn and head straight until you reach the rounded oasis of desks and carrels facing Anderson Hall and labeled "Quiet: Study Area." If you have arrived at this place, you have won. The harsh overhead lighting is assuaged by the full wall of natural light. The noise level is low enough but not so low that you feel bad noisily resituating yourself in your chair.
Now let's take a trip downstairs. You may think that we are already downstairs. But there's more: There's Level G, only reachable through one stairwell but worth the search. Its merits are many. First, there are comfortable armchairs available in its small group study area, which, from what I glean, is rarely a group study area because groups rarely find it. Second, it has movable stacks that are ideal for hide and seek and squashing people you don't like. Third, it resembles the oasis above it but has a cooler climate, if you're into that.
I hope that this outsiders' recount has been educational, and I hope you'll share with me your input or dissenting views about these and other subcategories of Tisch's socio-cultural geography. Obviously, we'll leave out late-night study. There are some sacrifices not worth making for research.
