UBC 101 – Irving All Nighters 109

UBC 101 - Irving All Nighters 109 is the result of a personal experience and several attempted experiences. I hope that you never have to pull an all nighter, a.k.a not sleeping all night, at Irivng K. Barber Learning Center (Irving as I call it). It’s not fun, but it’s bearable and doable, especially in such a nice place like Irving.

1. What’s this “Irving” that we’re pulling an all nighter at?

Lots of new students to UBC might not know where or what Irving is, so it’s appropriate to start here.

Irving is the main library of UBC. It is across from the Hennings building and diagonally across the SUB (the red rectangle in the map below):

Irving is arguably second most beautiful building at UBC, with the Chan Centre taking the title.

Someone on Overheard at UBC says a visitor mistook it for a church. I don’t blame them.

Some basic specs: 4 floors including the basement; a small deli called Ike’s Cafe that sells sandwiches, salads, fruit and other things; the Chapman Learning Commons which has many computers, a printer/scanner, some Mac computers’ and big comfy couches; and many tables and rooms close to plugs, which are in constant need among students.

I’ve studied at Irving all the time, perhaps only a few times in Walter C. Koerner Library, the second largest library at UBC.

In comparison with Koerner Library, Irving is closer to the SUB and bus loop which is great for getting food and when going home at night. It’s also brighter and has more open space, but therefore having less quiet areas to study which is the main benefit of Koerner. Irving has 3 rooms that are “silent rooms”: on the fourth floor, there is one at the end of the hallway (Nass Reading Room 459) and one half-way in the hall-way (Musqueam Room 455), and one in the third floor, at the back of the book stacks that lots of people call the “Harry Potter Room” (Ridington Room 321). It really does look like something out of Harry Potter. If you prefer a quiet area to study, these places are for you. However, the first 2 rooms tend to become warm and stuffed up because of the lack of air flow, and all of them are in frequent demand during exam times.

The largest appeal of Irving is that it’s the only building at UBC open 24/7, albeit only during finals season. During the rest of the year, it’s open until 1 am. People sleep there….for days…I’ve seen them. It gets nasty.

UBC 101 – Introduction to Cheat Sheets

UBC 101 – Introduction to Cheat Sheets will be a pretty new tutorial for most students coming from high schools. There’s not much to it, but there are some things to know.

1. What are “cheat sheets”?

Cheat sheets are usually 1-sided (sometimes 2-sided) pieces of paper where you can put anything you want and take it to your exam. They are usually only used for science classes such as math, biology, physics, etc.

2. Why’s it important to make/have a cheat sheet?

This is pretty basic, but you want a cheat sheet because you’ll forget something from what you studied and some concepts are too complicated to memorize. Let’s face it, those math equations are pretty minor ideas, but they do have the slightest chance of being on the exam, especially those surface area and volume equations. Also, if you know you’re going to copy something word for word, like a list of all the eons and eras, you don’t have to study for that and study more for other concepts.

For many courses, your prof will give you practice exams. In order to take the practice exam as if it was your real exam, you need your cheat sheet. Everything to make it more like realistic right?

But the biggest benefit to making a cheat sheet is that it’s part of your studying. You read from your notes and textbook, copy it down, and you’ve pretty much memorized it in the process. For my first Biology 121 exam, I only looked at my cheat sheet once, and some of my friends never looked at it at all, partly because of the time constraint.