In this December exam season, students inevitably make a habit of bundling up and studying late into the night. And as a comprehensive solution to the stress of the month, there’s nothing better than coffee.

Ann Arbor and the University campus area offer a variety of options for coffee lovers looking for a fix or students looking for a study pick-me-up. There are the chains — Starbucks, Biggby, Espresso Royale. And then there are the locally owned Ann Arbor coffee shops that students, professors and city natives frequent.

The baristas in each shop are vital in creating shop loyalty and establishing a warm environment. They stand between customers and their coffee and represent, for many, a valuable part of any coffee shop experience.

“Barista” is Italian for bartender, and in a similar vein to their pub counterparts, baristas often invest significant energy in perfecting their skills to be ready for whatever the customer may order. While the idea of the barista may conjure images of a blank-faced, rote assembly-line job, a look around Ann Arbor coffee shops — where students are often the faces behind the counter — reveals a different picture.

“Being a barista definitely has a lot of personality, because there's such an interaction with the customer,” said LSA junior and Espresso Royale barista Kristopher Gutowski. “It’s a very high-energy job.”

Gutowski used to work in The Coffee House, a small shop in his hometown of Muskegon, Mich. While the job proper remains the same, Gutowski said the extraneous elements of working in each shop are very different.

“(The Coffee House) was a lot less busy, because it wasn't right on the corner of a college campus,” he said. “But there are also a lot of different business practices. At home … I worked directly with the owner, I talked to him, I knew him really well. Now, there's sort of a distance.”

Baristas at smaller coffee shops here on campus echo Gutowski’s feelings concerning the difference between working with the owner of a local shop or as part of a chain.

“I haven't worked in any shops that weren't specialty shops,” said Ben Saginaw, a barista at Comet Coffee in Nickels Arcade. “This is by far my favorite, because … the owner of this shop has a set of values I can stand behind, and that's a rarity in business. It is a requirement for (the employees) to appreciate everything that goes from the farm to the grocer to the cup, which I don't think is apparent in all coffee shops.”

A concern for many baristas as they look to advance their skills is the opportunity to be creative in their jobs and infuse their own styles into the different drinks they make. While in larger coffee shop chains, consistency is paramount, baristas in smaller shops try to do things their way.

“Starbucks is all about making everything the same,” said Jason Bies, an LSA senior and barista at Café Ambrosia on Maynard Street. “If you get a French Vanilla cappuccino at that Starbucks and you go get a French Vanilla cappuccino at another Starbucks, they're all supposed to be the same, and that's just not what (coffee is) about. It's about going places and having your own individual thing.”

Matt Roney, a 2009 graduate and former Michigan Daily staffer, is a barista at Lab Café on East Liberty Street and was the lead barista upon the shop’s opening in January. Having worked in coffee shops since he was 17, Roney had the basic barista skills. But in order to gain experience with the advanced equipment he was going to employ at Lab, he traveled to Chicago to train for the job.

Roney highlighted the specific technology as a unique characteristic of smaller, more personally involved coffee shops. While using Lab’s espresso machine, he talked about the “superautomatic” machinery that a shop like Starbucks uses.

“I’m not deriding them,” he said, “but they can push a button and out comes the espresso shot.