During the first week of school, new students with large, unfolded campus maps held out in front of them will wander the Quad searching for Himes or Prescott.
Others, once the instructor firmly states what class they are in and that Geology 1001 is in E121 and not Room 121, will quietly pack their book sacks and exit the classroom.
The truth is, every student, old or new, has been in that position before because we all once were new to campus.
The University can be a scary place for new students not familiar to the campus. Let’s face it, LSU is the size of most small towns in Louisiana.
The main suggestion I would give to new students is to become acquainted with where everything is on campus before the first day of school.
Having never lived in the dorms, I had to take extra time to find classes and buildings on my own.
One of the best ideas my roommates and I had was to walk through our schedules the Sunday before classes began our first semester. We walked
from the Quad to CEBA, Lockett to Tureaud and figured out which buildings
and room numbers marked our classes.
Virginia Smith, a counselor at the University College for Freshman
Year, also suggests a walk through of your schedule.
This way, you won’t end up late for any of your classes because you couldn’t find your way around Lockett.
Which brings me to my next point: there are tricks to finding your way through those buildings famous for being so architecturally confusing.
For instance, navigating Lockett Hall requires good directional skills. Although it’s quite ugly and plain on the outside, Lockett has a very symmetrical floor plan.
This means if you aren’t careful and aware of your direction, you might end up exiting through a different door than you entered — causing you to leave Lockett facing the street instead of Prescott.
Coates Hall is similarly confusing, but remember this important bit of information: there are stairs at the opposite ends of Coates near the Union side of the building and another set of stairs near the Quad side. Neither of them go to the same place.
Howe-Russell is fairly easy to figure out, as long as you remember as I said above that Room E121 and Room 121 are two separate classrooms.
Now this brings us to the mother of all campus buildings, CEBA. It looms over the southern horizon of campus and looks big enough to house nuclear weaponry.
It has open courtyards, rooms numbered in the thousands and likely its own subterranean species lurking its corridors.
Robert Hines, co-building coordinator for CEBA, agrees the numbering is somewhat odd.
Hines said an inside joke is that the architect who designed CEBA made it so students couldn’t find their instructors’ offices.
Hines has worked as coordinator for CEBA for five years and said it took him three months to figure out the place (which means by the time you figure out how to find your accounting professor, it will be finals week).
However, Hines gives students decent tips on navigating CEBA. He said the majority of business classes are in the north part of the building while the majority of engineering courses are taught in the south part.
Also, most classes in general take up the first and second floors of the building.
Hines said students should observe signs along the hallways and should not hesitate to ask for directions or visit him in Room 3304 (just don’t ask me how to get there).
Although classrooms are not as difficult to find as instructors’ offices, Hines said instructors understand this.
Many instructors in CEBA as well as across the campus conduct communications with students through PAWS. This means students can hunt them down through e-mail rather than on foot.
For more on how to be prepared for the first day of the semester, check out UCFY’s list of helpful tips for freshmen.