It may be hard to imagine the amount of stress that lead to the consumption of ungodly amounts of caffeine and all-night knowledge benders when you’re still reading syllabi and learning the names of all of your classmates.  When that time inevitably arrives, you will probably find yourself relying on one of the many computer labs on campus, which is why it is more important than ever to review some simple guidelines to proper etiquette.

Here’s a good rule of thumb; if you see anyone waiting in line for a computer, at least have the decency to pretend to be working. I do not care if you have your Facebook news feed open in another tab while you sporadically attempt to write your paper at the last minute, but Founders Memorial Library during midterms is neither the time nor the place for you to peruse random pictures or plow your “Farmville” fields.

On a related note, it takes a special level of obliviousness to be the headphone guy. You know who I’m talking about: the guy who brought his ridiculously oversized headphones that make him look like Princess Leia so he could watch the “Double Rainbow” video on YouTube for the 15th time.

I do not care how funny things are in Auto-Tune or how cute baby pandas are when they sneeze. I just know that it’s not funny or cute when I’m trying to write a critical analysis of Dostoevsky and I have to listen to a grown man giggle like a schoolgirl in the front row of a Justin Bieber concert.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that this is all common sense or that I may have some unresolved anger management issues. In either case, you are probably right. However, we have all been in the back of the line watching our peers master the art of procrastination and we all know how frustrating it can be.

Having said that, there is one pet peeve that I am somewhat lenient on because I know the perpetrator’s heart is usually in the right place: excessive printing.

I admit that I binge-printed when I first found out that it was free, but there is nothing more frustrating than standing in a backed up line waiting for your fellow student to print out his 240-page epic sci-fi thriller script on the one remaining functional printer for the second time because he didn’t like the spacing on the title page of his first copy.

However, many students realize that this is an easily avoidable inconvenience. Senior psychology major Christina Smith offered some advice on the subject.

“If you’re going to print off all of your notes for the semester, do it at an off time like late at night,” she said.

For those who insist on printing all of your class materials at once, at least go to a class to see how the note-taking process is going to work before you wipe out an entire ecosystem just so you can have a hard copy of every PowerPoint slide for every class. This is a problem I have noticed to be most prevalent with overzealous new students, so it should be handled with patience.

So there you have it: three simple guidelines for using the computer labs more efficiently and avoiding 600-word tangential rants from bitter columnists.