The Cupertino Library serves as a weekend study hall area for students

On weekdays, the recently renovated Cupertino Library Teen Room is rather quiet, and most of the colorful seats that line the desks are usually empty. However, on weekends, it’s a whole different story.

On Sundays, the Teen Room reflects the low buzz of students coming in and out and is always filled with art supplies, scattered textbooks, and crowded computer stations. The Cupertino Library provides a convenient place to meet for students to meet for school projects or a quiet sanctuary to work on homework.

For juniors Amy Chung and Tammy Yau, who had overloaded their table with art supplies and construction paper for an American Literature project due the following week, the library is their compromise area between meeting at a group member’s house and not being able to meet at all.

“It is [usually] easier to come to the library, as opposed to fighting over whose house to go to,” Chung said. “[I come] once or twice a month [because] it’s more fun to group study, since you don’t end up studying half the time.”

Sophomore Hannah Huh, who had just started coming to the library the day before, was sitting in a big orange chair near the group. However, she plans to come much more often throughout the course of her sophomore year, as she believes it provides an environment that she usually doesn’t find at home.

“Weirdly, [at] my house, there’s a lot of distractions, like food, TV, and the computer [so] I’d never be able to sit down and work,” Huh said. “At the library, you can just sit down and there’s usually nothing else to do.”

Huh plans on coming in three or four times a week, just for the quiet atmosphere the library offers. She also enjoys the massive amounts of students who also appear at the library on the weekend since it allows easy communication with classmates for help on homework and other class projects. Junior Richard Kwon agrees as well, since he was previously unable to meet at his friend’s house to study for his upcoming AP Biology test.

“The library’s made for studying, like other people’s main goals to come here is to study, instead of messing around,” Kwon said. “I’m not really used to going to other places. I usually thought people went to [Starbucks] because its cool or something.”

However, sophomore Alice Yin doesn’t appreciate the huge crowds in the Teen Room on the weekends, where she has to shuffle through the people who swarm around bookshelves to get a comfortable place to sit. Although the library provides valuable resources for her, she believes there are downsides as well.

“It’s kinda cramped in places and it doesn’t have a good environment to study,” Yin said. “There’s not that much space either, and you can’t be left alone in the library.”

Despite these challenges, students still go to the Cupertino Library for quiet studying and project meetings. Even though senior Kate Kim doesn’t come to the Cupertino Library very often, she still prefers the library to other meeting places.

“If you meet like Starbucks [or something], then it bothers you more because you can’t focus and a lot of people go in and out,” said Kim. “[In contrast, the Cupertino library] is [not only] a public place where anyone can come and meet friends from other schools, but there are also more references [for projects] so it really adds more variety to your bibliography.”

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