If you’ve ever gone into a building on this campus other than a residence hall after the hours of 10 p.m., you will be shocked to be in the company of no one but a couple of dead/dying crickets and occasionally public safety. You will also discover that there are places you would never go in the daytime, new spaces to be unveiled. Doors to open. Doors that won’t open. Weird smells. Odd corners. Classrooms that are unbelievably boring without people in them. One of my favorite things to do is to explore them.
Starting with the obvious best place to explore: Gaylord Hall. Personal favorite. Nothing like bringing an oblivious friend up the creaky stairs to Gaylord 500 before telling them about its tales. The multiple stairwells, various ceiling heights and the spirit of the communications department looming near makes every dark hallway a little more exciting to go down. Peering into the graveyard that is the window of the journalism lab’s door, you might see the essence of an early-departed professor (not dead) toward the front of the closet-sized classroom, particularly on the whiteboard. Of the four different stairwells, the best one is obviously the one-story, cemented, air-freshened descent into the basement right off the first floor.
I should mention that it is important to do all of these at night. Preferably when you have homework to be done or an early morning. Exploring in the daytime is half the fun and requires a much fuller social battery. You also don’t risk opening a classroom door during class.
Once you’ve cleared out Gaylord and said your farewells to the spirits, skip over to the Communications building. The newer the building, the less weird doorways you can find. The Conservatory is also a good option if you aren’t a theatre person, but there aren’t many classrooms to stay there for long. Anyway, Communications is peak exploring material. Even though most of the place is locked up, you can go into the 067 lecture hall and watch Shrek as many times as your heart desires on the giant projector. However, the point of exploring is to keep moving, so don’t do that. Also, never touch anything besides a door handle; that also defeats the purpose of exploring.
Once you have successfully infiltrated the communication building, you are going to exit out of a new door you might have just discovered and head towards Lied. The bugs will be getting bad at this point, so push through. If you’ve seen public safety, make sure you give them a nice wave and maybe a friendly hello. Never be surprised by their presence. Or at least don’t show it.
In Lied, don’t disturb me, who is probably in the lounge actually getting her work done. (Guess where I’m writing this from.) Enter loud enough that I can hear you but not loud enough that it’s irritating. Anyway, you are not going to really go into any classrooms here because 1) they probably aren’t open, and there’s no second point. So walking here was probably a waste of your time, but you could grab coffee from the lounge and be okay.
You’re probably wondering why Perry and Art & Ed didn’t make it on the list. Respectively, the buildings are too familiar and too new. Ask me again in 20 years. Maybe 30. Anyway, keep exploring!
