A Guide to the University

    Food

    The TWU Cafeteria is open 7am to 8pm. It serves snacks, drinks, ice cream bars and meals. You can pay with cash or your ID cards. You can add meal money to your ID cards at the Front Desk. Even if you do not buy your food in the cafeteria, you can use the tables to eat your lunch, to have meetings and to study.

    If you are on campus in the evening or late at night, you can buy snacks, fast food, and drinks in the Lower Café located in the bottom level of the Gouglas Centre. This area is often used for entertainment such as concerts, games or TV watching.

Relaxation

    The Globe, located in the bottom level of McMillan Hall, is available for relaxing, studying, cooking, and eating. Monthly activities are held here for all international students. Hours are 10 am to 10 pm, closed on Sundays.

Health

    Located on the top floor of Douglas Hall, the Wellness Centre is committed to physical, emotional and social health. A doctor and nurse is available if you have health questions or need immediate medical help or personal advice. The cost of this is included in your medical insurance. Hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to noon and 1:00 to 4:30pm.

Academic Support

    All students have access to the Writing Centre on the upper floor of Douglas Hall. Here, qualified volunteers will work with you on written work, grammar, vocabulary, and other academic skills. You can sign up for an appointment on the sign-up sheet outside the door two 30 –minute appointments per week maximum. This service is free.

Transportation

    The TWU Express is a shuttle service. The shuttle transports students between campus and the shopping centre, leaving from the Mattson Centre. Operation hours are between 8am and 3pm. Saturdays only. Round trip fare is $1.

    Here are some schools in Southeast England. Find out if you are interested in any of them.

    People in South Korea who feel they can no longer bear the stress of everyday life now can choose to stay in a prison to relax and think deeply.

    In a society where pressure to do well in school and find highly-paid jobs is intense, a former lawyer came up with an extreme relaxation idea. Kwon Yong-seok created the "Prison Inside Me" —a stress-reduction center with a punishment theme. People come here to cut themselves off from the outside world and pay to be kept in 60-square-foot (5.6-square-meter) cells (囚室).

    Located on the outskirts of Hongcheon, about 58 miles (93 km) northeast of Seoul," Prison Inside Me" came to life after Mr. Kwon voluntarily asked to spend time behind bars for" healing reasons," but his request was turned down." I didn't know how to stop working back then," he said." I felt like I was being swept away against my will, and it seemed I couldn't control my own life." So, Kwon and his wife Roh Ji-hyang decided to take matters into their own hands, and designed and built a prison-like spiritual center. The construction was completed in June last year and cost about 2 billion won ($19 million).

    The facility includes 28 cells, furnished with only a toilet, a sink and a small table, where guests can spend time alone, thinking about life and enjoying private thinking periods. Moreover, guests can also join group thinking periods in the hall, where they are given instructions on how to free themselves from what Mr. Kwon calls the "inner prison" to find inner peace.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of stressed South Koreans are checking in at the stress-reduction facility to think about their lives and regain control of it. A two-night stay at" Prison Inside Me" costs 150,000 won ($146).

    Mr. Kwon and his wife explained that at the beginning they had a different plan for the" relaxation center," and imagined a longer stay for their guests, but, given that people weren't able to take more time off, they had to reduce the length of stays to just two days.

    Park Woo-sub, a guest at" Prison Inside Me," said the experience helped him a lot." This is my third time in prison. Being kept in a prison makes me hard to breathe, but it also offers time to focus only on me and spend some quiet time with myself."

    Others said the experience would have been more helpful if the conditions had been poorer, like in a real prison.

    Failure is probably the most exhausting experience a person ever has. There is nothing more tiring than not succeeding.

    We experience this tiredness in two ways: as start-up fatigue(疲惫) and performance fatigue. In the former case, we keep putting off a task because it has either too boring or too difficult. And the longer we delay it, the more tired we feel.

    Such start-up fatigue is very real, even if not actually physical, not something in our muscles and bones. The solution is obvious though perhaps not easy to apply: always handle the most difficult job first.

    Years ago, I was asked to write 102 essays on the great ideas of some famous authors. Applying my own rule, I determined to write them in alphabetical(按字母顺序), never letting myself leave out a tough idea. And I always started the day's work with the difficult task of essay-writing. Experience proved that the rule works.

    Performance fatigue is more difficult to handle. Though willing to get started, we cannot seem to do the job right. Its difficulties appear so great that, however hard we work, we fail again and again. In such a situation, I work as hard as I can-then let the unconscious take over.

    When planning Encyclopaedia Britannica (《大英百科全书》), I had to create a table of contents based on the topics of its articles. Nothing like this had ever been done before, and day after dat I kept coming up with solutions, but none of them worked. My fatigue became almost unbearable.

    One day, mentally exhausted, I wrote down all the reasons why this problem could not be solved. I tried to convince myself that the trouble was with the problem itself, not with me. Relived, I sat back in an easy chair and fell asleep.

    An hour later, I woke up suddenly with the solution clearly in mind. In the weeks that followed, the solution which had come up in my unconscious mind provided correct at every step. Though I worked as hard as before, I felt no fatigue. Success was now as exciting as failure had been depressing.

    Human beings, I believe must try to succeed. Success, then, means never feeling tired.

  A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic

Genre: Fantasy

Number of Pages: 320

What's the basic story line?

Kai and Leila have never met, but their seemingly dull lives will be drawn together in unbelievable ways. Each girl is vacationing—Kai in Texas and Leila in Pakistan. Each girl finds a copy of a book called The Exquisite Corpse. Each book is blank, but when Kai writes a sentence, the book magically begins a story. When either girl writes another phrase, the book shows more. Whatever the girls are doing when they write—getting attacked by a dog, hunting for a rare species, accidentally buying a goat—helps to develop the plot of The Exquisite Corpse. It also makes reading A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic even more enjoyable.

Are the characters believable? Many aspects of the characters are realistic. Readers see that the characters, like all of us, can sometimes fail. Also, both characters have some unflattering (不讨人喜欢的) qualities, even though they're represented as "the good guys" in the story.

Who would like this book? Any lover of fantasy and stories about magic would enjoy this book. Readers who enjoy knowing things the characters don't, or who like being shocked by a huge plot twist (曲折的情节),will like this book.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate this book? I would rate A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic a perfect 10, because of the creative story idea and the crazy plot twists that keep the reader turning page after page. I, for one, did not want the story to end.

Group Study Rooms Policy

The Library's group study rooms are for current students, academic use only. 

Reserving Rooms

Reserve a room at https://biblio.csusm.edu/groupstudy. 

5th floor rooms open to reservations 2 weeks in advance; 3rd & 2nd floor rooms open to reservations 1 week in advance; 4th floor rooms open to reservations 24 hours in advance. 

Rooms can be reserved for a maximum of 3 hours per visit and up to 12 hours total per week. Rooms can be reserved once per day per person. 

Rooms not occupied within 10 minutes of the reservation time are no longer available, and can be occupied by another group until the next reservation for that room. 

Reservations can be deleted. Please do so if the room is no longer needed. To delete your reservation, go to the calendar and click the room, date and time, then select Delete Entry. 

If the room you reserved is occupied, you may ask the group to leave or request assistance from staff at the Media Desk (2nd floor).

Use of rooms

Drinks in covered containers and small individual snacks are allowed. 

Doors should be kept closed when in use. 

Sound travels, even with the door closed-respect those studying around you by keeping the volume at a reasonable level. 

Visibility of the space is not to be blocked. Windows are not to be covered in any way.