Shhh!

Well, I've taken the MPRE and won't know if I passed for 5 WEEKS. In the mean time, I've witnessed offensive coffeehouse behavior during my 24 hour preparation for the exam. So, it's time we established some coffeehouse etiquette.

Here's the deal: If your local coffeehouse has more than one room, and in one room sit many loud undergrads with no need for productivity on a Friday night, and in the other room sits one lonely soul working furiously to learn material in a short span of time, and you and your date/friend/colleague intend to have a loud discussion about the mysteries of the universe, DO NOT sit down in the otherwise silent room and talk loudly!!!

Now, I realize that coffeehouses are not libraries and that if I wanted complete solitude I should have stayed at home. I study in coffee shops and other public places because I feel less inclined to crawl in my bed and forget the whole thing, and because I actually enjoy a reasonable amount of background noise.

That does not mean, however, that I want to know every detail about the personal lives surrounding me--and I would feel that way regardless of whether I were studying. People seem all too inclined to share their most intimate feelings in the most public of settings these days, completely disregarding the presence of other people.

Cell phone talkers are among the worst culprits. This also happens a lot in restaurants, where Table A is so enthralled with the rollicking good time they're having that they fail to realize no one else in the restaurant can hear their dinner companions over the laughter of Table A. But this behavior is particularly aggravating when the perpetrators are the only people talking in a given place. It's not that I expected the couple to sit silently just because I was doing so--I just didn't want to hear every intimate detail of their conversation.

So, if everyone around you seems hard at work, just make some small effort to confine your conversation to your table. Rule of thumb: if I'm two tables away, and I'm literally plugging my ears to concentrate, and I can still hear every word you're saying, you are TOO LOUD.