O’Neill Library

Hi, I’m the Answer Wall! I’ve been perched in the O’Neill Library lobby at Boston College since February 2017, except for a year in 2020 when I went fully online. Ask me a question by posting a post-it on me in O’Neill Library. I’ll answer within a day on weekdays. I snooze on the weekends, because answering questions is hard work!

Give me a book rec for someone who hates reading but wants to enjoy it. Please [smiley face]

Give me a book rec for someone who hates reading but wants to enjoy it. Please [smiley face]
Give me a book rec for someone who hates reading but wants to enjoy it. Please [smiley face]

Try out a book that doesn’t have large walls of text to overcome! Novels-in-verse like Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down or María Dolores Águila’s A Sea of Lemon Trees (which was just on the Long List for the National Book Award) are phenomenal options. Graphic novels are great too — like K. O’Neill’s Tea Dragon Society or Harmony Becker’s Himawari House. Plus, you can find all of these and more over with my friends at the ERC!

Where is the best place to nap on campus?

Where is the best place to nap on campus?
Where is the best place to nap on campus?

Last I knew there were some relaxing loungers in the Gasson basement. O’Neill library is full of soft restaurant-booth-style benches (levels 1, 3, and 5), a few couches on level 5, and some comfy padded chairs in secluded corners if slouch-napping suits you. Borrow some headphones from O’Neill user services and be crooned to sleep by Lionel Richie or Nat King Cole at the Vinyl Listening Station, or borrow a MUSE headband to let brain biofeedback help you relax: bit.ly/bcl-muse.

How can I convince my roommate to let go of her?

How can I convince my roommate to let go of her?
How can I convince my roommate to let go of her?

One of the harder assignments as someone’s friend is watching them make a mistake and knowing that trying to talk them out of it is extremely unlikely to help. As long as they’re not hurting anyone, the thing to do is to sit with them and let them get to a place where they make that decision themself. Everybody grieves differently. A breakup is real grief. They may just not be on the same clock as you are about that. It’s all OK. But all sympathy from your friend, the Wall, on that situation.

Opinion on coke + OJ? (1:1) Trying to prove a point here.

Opinion on coke + OJ? (1:1) Trying to prove a point here.
Opinion on coke + OJ? (1:1) Trying to prove a point here.

I don’t do beverages myself (liquids make me nervous and mess up the Post-Its), but my sources are mixed on whether that’s a reasonable concept. The existence of the mimosa suggests that carbonation by itself isn’t a problem. Most of your knockoff Coke syrup recipes include a good bit of citrus zest. I dunno. Maybe 1:1 would be too much, but you could try it.

Dream or wake?

Dream or wake?
Dream or wake?

Sometimes the world is so strange it’s hard to tell, but the waking world still makes fractionally more sense than dream logic, so I’ll go with wake. That, and walls don’t really sleep.

hey i just noticed your sign quotes Mending Wall by Robert Frost but isn’t the point of the poem that the poet DOESN’T think that good fences make good neighbors? So what do you think it means?

hey i just noticed your sign quotes Mending Wall by Robert Frost but isn't the point of the poem that the poet DOESN'T think that good fences make good neighbors? So what do you think it means?
hey i just noticed your sign quotes Mending Wall by Robert Frost but isn’t the point of the poem that the poet DOESN’T think that good fences make good neighbors? So what do you think it means?

Poems are like a hall of mirrors reflecting how complicated humans can be. If you want a clear statement, look anywhere but poems. I’d like to recommend an essay about the poem and how it’s been read and mis-read through the years: bit.ly/pf-mending-wall.