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**You’re paying big bucks to be here at Queen’s.**
**You worked your ass off to get here and likely you’ll have to work fairly hard to stay here.**
**Add to that a desire to have a dazzling social, sex, and extracurricular life and you’ve got a lot to look after.**
**You have to make your time here count.**
**It’s not hard to have a great work / play balance.**
**In fact, it’s what makes Queen’s so great.**
**People here know how to work hard and play even harder.**

**Granted, working hard really is only half the battle.**
**You have to know what you are getting yourself into.**
**Getting a 90% average in PoliSci just ain’t going to happen – but it’s one of the most rewarding programs of study at Queen’s.**
**In the mood for studying and headed to the second floor of Stauffer Library?**
**Think again.**
**Go into your education at Queen’s armed with the advice of upper years.**
**Your education here isn’t all about courses and grades and midterms.**
**It’s about learning how to live on your own and how to create interesting new relationships.**

**study spots**
**Like it or not, you’ll be spending a fair bit of your time at Queen’s studying, and sometimes your ghetto house with eight million distractions just doesn’t cut it.**
**We’ve compiled a list of some of the greatest spots on and off to campus to study.**

**The Common Ground**
**Otherwise known as CoGro, Common Ground is more than just your average study stop.**
**Here you can enjoy a number of coffee-based beverages, along with smoothies, iced teas, and Italian sodas.**
**They also have sandwiches (recommended: the Ham, Apple, Cheddar) and cake- really, really good cake.**
**Located on the second floor of the JDUC, Common Ground has ample space filled with comfy sofas and armchairs, along with regular tables.**
**It can certainly get noisy and rowdy here, but you are likely to bump into classmates who you can woo class notes for say, the price of a Peachy Queen’s smoothie.**

**Fireside Reading Room**
**Located on the second floor of Stauffer Library is a big room filled with large oak tables and warm fireplaces.**
**Honestly, why would you study anywhere else?**
**The room looks out over the corner of Union and University and is a picture perfect spot for studying.**
**It can be hard to find a table in here, especially if you want a whole one to yourself.**
**So go early and stake a claim.**

**The Sleepless Goat**
**Located at 91 Princess Street, the Sleepless Goat, or just ‘the goat’ as regulars call it, is a workers cooperative coffee house serving up affordable fair trade coffees, desserts and vegan fare.**
**They showcase local art on the walls and have lots of tables and chairs.**

**Starbucks at Johnson & Division**
**This Starbucks is one of the nicest coffee shops I have ever seen, as it is located inside a beautiful, old limestone building- something that was well incorporated into the store’s design.**
**Here you will encounter the usual Starbucks fare, free wireless, and many, many students.**
**This is a good place to study in the evenings, and is always a great place to enjoy an overly complicated drink while surfing the Internet.**

**Coffee and Company**
**Located directly across the street from the Johnson and Division Starbucks is Coffee and Company, a local chain.**
**The selection is fairly wide here, and prices are moderate.**
**The chai latte is well worth trying.**
**Coffee and Co. has another location downtown at Princess and King that is far more elaborate.**
**It has a good number of tables and chairs, plus the staff doesn’t mind if you stay for hours.**

**The Grad Club**
**A bar and music venue in the evenings, the Grad Club is an overlooked spot to get some daytime studying done.**
**It’s a huge old mansion right on campus on the corner of Barrie and Union and has three floors filled with nooks and crannies for studying in.**
**They have a limited lunch menu and cheap drinks that flow all day long.**
**So if that Pot Shard labelling is getting you down, just grab a tall one.**

**Indigo (Starbucks)**
**For some reason or another my favourite study spot is the Starbucks in the Indigo on Princess.**
**Located on the top floor of Indigo there’s a small Starbucks with lots of seating and a great view of Princess street.**
**Sure it’s nothing special, but the atmosphere is really great.**
**They pack lots of little tables into a small space, so you are always bumping, literally, into a friend or a friend of a friend or a classmate.**
**Plus, you are welcome to browse the selection of books at Indigo for inspiration or those well earned study breaks!**

**bird courses**
**Queen’s certainly offers some of the most stimulating and challenging courses out there; the majority of the courses I’ve taken at Queen’s were tough.**
**However, there exists a certain batch of courses that are so hard to fail it’s nearly impossible.**
**Read on …**

**Physics 020 (Physicists in the Nuclear Age)**
**Aside from being, bar none, the easiest course I’ve ever taken at Queen’s, PITNA was a fabulous course.**
**Boris, the prof, is well spoken, bright, and funny, and he makes the lectures fascinating.**
**Now, I’m not sure how great this courses is going to look on your transcripts, but a 96% beside Physics 020 can’t look that bad.**
**C’mon, it’s ‘science’.**
**Anyway, the course sort of delves into great physics minds of the 20th century and makes for some great dinner party conversations.**
**If you’ve got the spare time take this course without hesitation.**
**Everyone enjoys it.**

**Film 250 (Fundamentals of Production)**
**In order to take this class you need to have Film 110, which most kids take in first year (it sounds easy, I mean you watch movies right?).**
**Anyway, Film 110 is not a bird course.**
**It’s not the hardest class there is, but it doesn’t fit into this category.**
**Anyway, after 110 you have a wealth of film courses open to you.**
**If you like being bored out of your skull and want an easy A, take Film 250.**
**I guarantee you will learn next to nothing, make a short film, and walk away with a boosted GPA.**
**Word of the wise, this is the most painfully slow moving class I have encountered.**
**Take it in the summer session if you can, as the class hours are dramatically cut.**

**Health 131 (Basic Human Nutrition)**
**This may have been the most useful course I took during my time at Queen’s – and it’s certainly up there with the least, err, challenging.**
**After taking this course I walked away with a greater understanding of the human body, I knew how to eat well, and I got an A.**
**The work load is light, very light.**
**I took the course by correspondence in the summer and still managed a month long backpacking stint in Europe in the middle of the class.**
**So, if you are at all interested in nutrition, calories, weight loss, or just general good health, take this course.**

**libraries**
**Queen’s has some amazing libraries, their collections are immense and their architecture stunning at times.**
**Chances are you’ll be spending a fair amount of your time at Queen’s holed up in a study carrel here, paying your overdue book fees, or frantically tracking down that required reading.**

**Food is allowed in the libraries in small quantities, and don’t think about bringing in your curry from last night.**
**Use common sense and bring in small, quiet study foods.**
**Drinks can be brought in so long as they are sealable.**
**Additionally, there are a few vending machines with pop, candies, gum, and random stationary.**
**Plus, you are never more than a few meters away from an on-campus coffee shop!**

**There are ample photocopy machines available, you just need to buy a copy card, and in most libraries there are after-hour checkouts, in case you desperately need that John Berger book at 2am.**

**Stauffer Library**
**Affectionately known as Club Stauff, Stauffer is the place to see and be seen on campus.**
**People often ‘dress up’ to study, err people watch, here.**
**Because of, or despite of this (depending on which way you swing), Stauffer is a great library.**
**It’s…**
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Ihab Salloum