Worried you won’t have a place to hit the books if these dreaded budget cuts wipe out prime study hours at the SLC and Tate II?

Can’t go home to study because of the laundry list of distractions (TV, roommates, sleep) that will keep you from preparing for your next test?

Don’t panic.

BOWERS

Just visit the nearest 24-hour breakfast joint and make yourself and your books at home. Get a double order of hash browns while you’re at it. Makes for good brain food. 

My fellow editors and I were slammed with tests and other school assignments last week, sending the newsroom into a frenzy.

After work last Thursday, some of us went to the SLC and commandeered a study room. But since the SLC is no longer open 24 hours, the lights in our study room cut off at 2 a.m., signaling we needed to exit quickly before the big, bad security guards kicked us out.

Not ready to cease studying — for fear of failing our tests — and not ready to go home — for fear of passing out on our beds — our next move was to the eatery some of us college kids visit at 2 a.m. on the weekends.

Dining at Waffle House is usually synonymous with satisfying inebriated hankerings for Texas toast sandwiches, not learning the factors of elasticity for supply and demand.

But nonetheless, two co-workers and I plopped down at the lunch counter at Waffle House and were reenergized by coffee, Coca-Cola and hash browns. We made headway in our study materials before our beds began calling our names about 4 a.m., as we made the trek home.

If hours at the SLC are cut further — open from only 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. — we, as students, can cope. Some who work for the University will be let go and forced to find work elsewhere instead of just adapting to working less hours running our beloved student centers.

We can find alternative study locations. We can make due with the resources that will remain. We can adapt to change, no matter how dramatic that change may be.

Though studying at Waffle House while watching drunk guys wander in for middle-of-the-night meals makes for a funny story, flash cards and study guides with a side of hash browns might end up being a staple on my study menu in the near future.

— Rachel G. Bowers is the sports editor for The Red & Black