Getting to SUB from anywhere except CAB or Van Vliet
SUB is a great building. They’ve got good food, great seating, quiet and loud spaces, the bookstore, SUBprint, the farmers market on Thursdays, and more. It’s too bad that it’s on such a far corner of campus. Not that it is insanely difficult to get to any place on campus in a timely manner, but it is most definitely out of the way to hustle over to SUB from FAB, HUB, ECHA, or ETLC for sure. To have to plan your day around whether you are going to go to SUB or not makes this more tiring than it should be.
Going from HUB to Rutherford South
Rutherford South is my go to study spot. You can choose pure silence or to be able to chat quietly with your friends while still being productive in the same place; it’s the best of both worlds. Nothing is nicer than hitting up Cookies by George, grabbing a snack and a coffee, and hunkering down in Rutherford South for hours on end, except for actually getting there. First, you go down the stairs from HUB to the ground floor of Rutherford just (only instead of just) to immediately climb an equal number of stairs to get up to Rutherford South Reading Room. On a good day, this doesn’t faze me, but on a bad day, when each jostling step makes me spill my coffee on myself and I’m in a haze of midterm stress, this slight inconvenience is the worst.
HUB
At night when the lights are on or early in the morning, HUB can be quite nice. It’s fairly quiet, there are lots of tables for studying, and plentiful food. On the other hand, at any other time of the day, the length of HUB is plagued with masses of people trekking to class who are more often than not walking on the wrong side of HUB. It is an unspoken (or sometimes very outspoken) rule that you walk on the right of HUB unless crossing to get food on the other side. The majority of travellers forget this rule, and it causes congestion and infuriation. Due to this, navigating HUB on anything less than a full night’s sleep and zero stress can be a tiring and awful experience.
Any Flight of Stairs in FAB
To any Fine Arts students, or even anyone at all who has ever encountered the torture that is FAB stairs, I send my deepest regards. Something about the hard brick steps with such an odd rise and run ratio make them the worst part of any students trek to class. In my first year, I had a 9 AM class on the third floor of FAB, and needless to say, it took about a week before I became a regular user of the elevator. I can easily tackle three or four flights in Bio Sci with the same energy that the two flights in FAB drain from me.
Let’s Be Honest: The Entirety of FAB
I’m a drama student, and I essentially live in FAB during the week and most weekends. That building, despite all the wonderful art that is created inside of it, is extremely lifeless. If it weren’t for the people and wonderful classes I am taking, I would avoid that building like the plague. However, I have been blessed with amazing classmates and interesting courses, so that building is one of my favourite on campus. Despite all this, though, it is an energy draining facility with all the stairs, weird sounds, and brown concrete walls.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay