Schmon Tower has long stood as a proud academic landmark at Brock University — a beacon of higher learning, intellectual curiosity and, more recently, a deeply concerning range of emotional environments depending entirely on which floor you happen to step out of the elevator onto.
In what experts (AKA me after a particularly long Tuesday night) are calling “a groundbreaking and absolutely necessary study,” this investigation seeks to answer a question that has plagued students, faculty and at least one visibly shaken tour group: why does every floor of the Tower feel like a completely different psychological experience?
While the university has yet to formally acknowledge these findings, likely due to “liability” and “concerns about bad vibes,” early data suggests that prolonged exposure to certain floors could result in symptoms that range from mild productivity to existential dread.
In this article, I will rank each floor of the Schmon Tower based on its emotional stability, starting with the most stable of floors and ending with the least stable of floors.
The Seventh Floor
If you are studying on the seventh floor, you think you are better than the rest of us (and you probably are).
In my humble opinion, the chosen few inhabiting the seventh floor of the library during the final leg of the semester suffer the least from the emotional psychosis we all seem to be experiencing.
For those fortunate enough to find a group table with a working plug, life is good. Although it is April and even the most stable of us are still in over their heads, lighthearted laughter echoes off of the stacks and everyone has a $7 Starbucks drink in hand. If you’re lucky, the first years still won’t have discovered that any other floor besides the sixth exists, so noise levels are low. Besides, even if they did manage to somehow make it past the party floor by accident, the looming rows of books surrounding the elevator would deter them from ever venturing past the bathrooms.
On the seventh floor, righteous outlet possession is respected, and no one has the nerve to move the bag you are using to reserve your seat in order to take the table for themselves.
Emotional stability reigns supreme on the seventh floor, and that is why you will never catch me hanging out there.
The Second Floor
It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone “studying” on the second floor isn’t really trying to get any work done.
Whether you are sitting in a booth, at a computer or in a group room, unproductive chatter floats through the air, misguiding even the most “locked-in” students. On top of this, the floor to ceiling windows that peer out into the main Thistle hallway are the ultimate distraction. No matter how confidently you tell all your friends that you aren’t waiting for that cute guy from your English class to saunter past, there is no hiding from the fact that you are spending all of your time looking for him rather than actually studying.
So, you ask, if the second floor is so full of distractions, why is it so high on your list? This is because the people who choose to work on the second floor are either three weeks ahead or three weeks behind in their classes. The former knows they can spend time socializing with friends without worrying, and the latter is in too deep to dig themselves out of the hole they have created. Either way, the average second floor inhabitant doesn’t truly want to lock in. They want to chat, and that suggests to me that their emotional stability is still high.
The only thing docking points from the second floor and keeping it from first place is the few people who are actually using the group rooms for their actual purpose: group work. And to those people I say — I am praying for you.
The Ninth Floor
While the ninth floor may be a designated silent space, those who inhabit it aren’t as lost in the sauce as you might think they are.
There is no doubt that the ninth floor is a great place to lock in. With rows of individual desks, numerous outlets and an almost completely soundless atmosphere (save the whistle of the wind outside of the windows), it is easy to get lost in your work. I have spent many an afternoon that has turned into a late evening working on the ninth floor, completely unaware of the passage of time.
Still, while the ninth floor does create somewhat of a temporal rift, those who spend the most of their time up there aren’t the craziest of the bunch. Are they stressed out? Absolutely! Have they considered breaking the glass and jumping out of the window? Not yet. That is what saves them from being lower on this list.
The Fifth Floor
I’ve always been rather convinced that the fifth floor of the Schmon Tower exists in a separate dimension, only accessible when you really start to lose it.
When I started at Brock eons ago, I accidentally stumbled upon the group study area on the fifth floor on one of my first days on campus. It was an astoundingly beautiful place, its teal couches and long tables never without a free working outlet. Yet after I got in the elevator and headed back down to the real world, it took me months to figure out what floor I had been on that day. It wasn’t until I was deep in the trenches that is university life in November that I stumbled upon this outlet ridden paradise a second time. I imagine it was because I really needed it.
The Sixth Floor
If I had to choose my least favourite floor of the library, the sixth floor would be a no-brainer.
With full offense intended, the sixth floor is a breeding ground for first years who still haven’t figured out what it means to be a sensible, level-headed and quiet inhabitant of one of the library floors. Without fail, there is always someone speaking so loudly that they might as well be screaming, and the topic of conversation is always the most astronomical story you’ve ever heard in your entire life. On top of that, the outlets never work and at least one of the whiteboards has a crude depiction of the male anatomy carved into it.
Complete with one of the oldest and crustiest bathrooms in the tower, the sixth floor is chock full of the most malevolent energy that can be found at Brock.
The Tenth Floor
Although the sixth floor is undeniably a place of great evil, nothing trumps the tenth floor at the start of April.
Everyone who has made the journey to the highest most student floor of the library is clearly starting to get desperate. Their hope is that the foreboding silence that overtakes the space will force them to lock in, but if they are hopeless enough to make the long elevator journey upwards, they are already too far gone. Nothing can help them now. I personally have spent many an afternoon trying to get any work done to absolutely no avail. It’s a real struggle.
It is this foreboding hopelessness that hangs in the air that makes the tenth floor the least emotionally stable floor on this list.
This article is part of a special edition of The Brock Press for April Fools and is completely satirical. None of the content contained within this article is meant to be representative of reality and all quotes have been fabricated.