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Best and Worst Study Spots at Carleton

Grace talks about Carleton's best and worst places to study.

Grace talks about Carleton's best and worst places to study.


Okay so at Carleton, you will probably spend around a third of your time studying. There’s no getting around it, even if you are a huge procrastinator, you will be peer pressured to study for large chunks of your day.

Since you will be sitting in one place to study for a long period of time, the choice of “where” to lock in very important. Luckily, I’m here to give you a list of the best and worst places to study (in my opinion.)

The Good: The Bald Spot

view of the bald spot

On a nice autumn day when campus is quiet and it’s not too cold, setting up underneath a tree in the bald spot can be one of the best places to study. 

Being outside while studying can be so good for morale. I love feeling the sun and the breeze when I study because I get so much joy out of it. The only reason why it’s lower on the list is because when it gets cold, there’s no way you’ll find me out there. 

The Great: Cassat Lounge

cassat lounge

I think some of my friends in Cassat will disagree because they live there and studying the same place you live is typically not ideal. However, I love going to Cassat lounges to study. Why Cassat in particular? Well, it’s probably the nicest dorm that freshmen can live in and they definitely have the best amenities.

For me, going to Cassat from Goodhue is the perfect distance from my dorm to put me in the right headspace for studying. There are a lot of comfy couches and on one end, there’s a giant booth style chair with tables that make it a great place in my mind to study. 

The Best: Third Libe 

the best spot on campus (third libe couches)

There is nowhere better. Period. For those who don’t know the Carleton Lingo, Third Libe = the third floor of the library. It should be called “perfection” however, and here’s why:

There is so much variety of places you can study. They have study rooms, tables out in the open, solo study desks, and probably the most comfortable chairs on campus. 

In addition, it has the perfect quiet level. At most colleges, the more floors you go up, the quieter it is. At Carleton, it’s the reverse: the further you go down, the more silent it is. Being just one level down, third libe isn’t dead silent but it’s not loud enough to be distracting. I can pull 6 hour study sessions down there easily.

The windows outside are also gorgeous. From some points, you can even see the Lyman lakes and the arb. Overall, this is just one of my favorite places to be on campus, period. 

The Bad: My Dorm

I actually don’t think studying in my dorm is that bad, but I want to put some caution tape about studying in your dorm: maybe don’t make it a habit. It’s so easy to let the hours wander by on a Saturday morning and realize that it’s 6:00 pm and you haven’t left your room all day.

If you do want to study in your dorm, I would recommend planning to go to a different place at a scheduled time just to keep mental health and sanity intact. 

There are some perks though to studying in your room! There isn’t anyone else so you can study with music blasting and you can curse out that one math problem as much as you want and there’s no one to give you any weird looks. 

The Worse: An Open Table and Chair in the Middle of the Hallway

Okay, so if you walk around some of the academic buildings, there will be random tables and chairs in the middle of the hallway. These places are nice if you have a meeting with someone or if you need to be somewhere to just be for a few minutes. 

However, if I’m with a friend and they want to sit in the middle of a hallway at one of these tables, I walk out. There are so many people walking by that I can never concentrate. Also, in my head, hallways are meant for travel. You go into a hallway with the sole goal of exiting that hallway to get where you need to go. Because of that, it’s really difficult to study for a long time because I always feel like I should be leaving. 

The Worst: Sayles

A crowd of people gather at tables for lunch in the large, vaulted space of Sayles-Hill Campus Center

Sayles is a great place to grab lunch with friends. Sayles is a great place to hang out in between classes. Sayles is a great place to take a nap when you’re exhausted and you don’t mind the noise.

Sayles is not a great place when you need to lock in for 4 hours on end. There are just so many other people there and it’s a very loud atmosphere, especially during meal times. I love it for so many things, but every time I end up at Sayles, I will fall asleep or get distracted by someone else that I know there. Maybe save this place for when you finally get that paper written. 

And there you have it! A lot of these places are only based off of personal preference, but I guess the moral of this post is to study in the places that are meant to be studied in. If you try to study in a place where you’re supposed to live or relax in, things won’t go well for your studying. Carleton has some really great places to study though so take advantage of them!


Grace (she/her) is always up for a good adventure and is right at home trying new things. At Carleton that’s everything from exploring new sections of the Arb to joining sports like rugby to meeting new people every day! She loves learning about the “whys” behind the world and hopes to be a physics major. You can find trying all the new clubs and opportunities she can at Carleton and hanging out with her friends.