“Productivity was surprisingly high,” Jabbar said following her chemistry exam yesterday. “You don’t have to worry about your friends having fun or whatever, because they’re all there with you, not goofing off.”

“In fact, we’re going back to Cabot tonight,” she said.

Time To Cram

While the first-years sprawl on the floor of a group study room in the early hours of Saturday morning, roommates Caroline C. Dixon and Joyce Jen, both ’04, sit across the library in adjacent cubicles.

“The library is really good for cramming,” says Jen, an economics concentrator. “It really helps to see other people awake at this hour. It makes you feel less tired, for some reason.”

Dixon, working on a paper for her psychology class, agrees.

“There are fewer distractions here,” she says. “I am far from my roommates and my bed.”

The two students, both wearing jeans and sweatshirts, took occasional study breaks to whisper across the cubicle wall.

Dixon said she does not venture into the Cabot library expect for during reading period. Last Friday marked her first all-nighter.

Jen said she had avoided Harvard’s library system completely before the middle of sophomore year.

But despite their fears, the roommates said they have fared well.

“I don’t really ever see any freaks here,” Dixon says. “I see my friends sometimes, who are only here during reading period. We just laugh—it’s like a big joke.”

The Man Who Sees It All

At 3:30 a.m. yesterday, Ronnie Broadfoot navigates through the sleeping and studying students with his squeaking cart to reshelve the library’s books.

Broadfoot, a librarian at the Ernest Mayr Library of Comparative Zoology, works four-hour shifts at Cabot during reading period and exams to make extra money—“and maybe because I’m sort of a masochist,” he adds, laughing.