Photos By: Elicia Osigwe
Text By: Jessica Barker
Take a breath of fresh air while studying for your first week of class. You can follow a picturesque route all the way from the Commons Center to the Alexander Heard Library and ace your classes without slugging through construction zones.
The first place that you can try to get some work done is the space directly outside the Commons Center. Green Adirondack-style modern chairs serve as a shady place to catch up on some reading for class and grab a snack at the same time. When the heat gets to be too much, just move inside to one of the bar-height tables in the lobby or use one of the lounges to relax with air conditioning as you read.
For more in-depth study, head across Peabody Esplanade. This should be the only construction you encounter on your hunt for study spots, and with clear-cut sidewalks and paths, it’s super-easy to navigate. Once you get through the construction, hang a right at the Administration building and walk to the building to the right of it. It will look almost identical, but it should have some banners outside and say “Peabody Library” over the door. Once you walk inside, be ready to look up.
Peabody Library greets you with a stained glass atrium that gives the lobby a warm glow.
Directly in front of you is a doorway, beyond which you can see shelves upon shelves of books. Check out some books (if you want) before you go back to the lobby and go downstairs.
Once you get downstairs to the study area, you will easily find your way to a large room with lots of tables, chairs, and even smaller rooms that let you have vast desks all to yourself with plenty of outlets and light to see. The Peabody study spaces offer everything you could need for a productive afternoon studying inside.
As a bonus, if you go downstairs just one more time, there is a spot called the Iris Cafe serving Frothy Monkey coffee and pastries so you can have fuel to get you through the grind. This library is perfect for Peabody majors (even though it’s open to anyone) and is a nice place to study close to Commons.
Farther away from Commons is the Stevenson Science and Engineering Library, which is perfect for STEM majors who may also want to consult professors for more confusing concepts. To get there, leave the Peabody Library and swing left, walking all the way by the playground and turning left to cross the footbridge.
Once you have crossed, follow the path around the perimeter of Stevenson until you see a grassy courtyard with a spiral staircase. Then, you can walk inside Stevenson Library.
There are so many places for you to find your own space. You’re greeted by an open library but can just as easily find stalls to study in all by yourself.
There are also small classrooms with tables for group study and whiteboards to work out equations and other concepts if you prefer group study time as well.
The computer lab can also help you stay connected even when your laptop dies, making it a perfect place to study for hours on end if need be.
Not only does the Stevenson Library have a lot to offer inside, but the courtyard with the spiral staircase is perfect to sit on a blanket and work outside, not too far from the comforts of the great indoors.
Next to the Stevenson Library, to the left of the courtyard with the spiral staircase, is the Alexander Heard Library. The Alexander Heard Library is nestled behind a group of silver chairs and tables.
The entrance to a cafe, Food for Thought Café, sits next to the library entrance.
Once you walk inside, you can explore the eight floors that the Alexander Heard Library has to offer. The different elevators actually travel to different floors with some elevators traveling to evenly numbered floors and some elevators traveling to oddly numbered floors. Each floor has a common room all its own with a community room on the sixth floor.
Outside of the Alexander Heard Library, there is another perfect place to put down a blanket and study or have a post-study picnic. With so many places to study and to unwind, the Alexander Heard Library has a lot to offer as a study space away from the grime of construction.
Ace your first few weeks of class and enjoy the space you do it in with this helpful Commons study crawl.