The mad scramble and general insanity of finals week will forever be a rite of passage in college, but at least USC took a step toward easing our troubles with the implementation of an online system for study room reservations, complete with mobile capabilities.
Rather than fighting tooth and nail simply for a quiet place to focus, we’ll instead be fighting tooth and nail trying to get a grasp of the exam material. This is the way it ought to be, and we’ve got to commend the library administrators’ efforts to streamline the peripherals of academia. By making the logistics of studying with a group easier to handle, students should be able to actually study and increase their knowledge of the subject (or come to terms with their lack thereof).
This is a good example of what students really need the university to be working on to make navigating USC’s campus a little easier. We’d like to see similar projects — like the online course evaluation response database Student Body Vice President Ryan Bailey campaigned on — come to fruition sometime soon. Technology is a valuable tool, and it should be embraced and employed for the better of the campus in similar ways.
We’ve yet to see how well the system will work, especially when it comes to how they’ll deal with those that reserve a room but don’t show up, but it seems surprisingly easy to use. We’ll call it cautious optimism.
There’s still plenty left to do to, but it’s little things like this that help students focus on learning, which is, arguably, the entire point of college. (Just don’t tell that to anyone with lower deck tickets to Thursday’s game.)