Alongside many other graduating seniors, my friends and I created bucket lists to (hopefully) complete by the end of our college careers. Something we realized while making these lists was just how many nooks and crannies there were on campus that we had never discovered before. Most of us lived in Southwest for just ¾ of our freshman year before being sent home for COVID, then immediately moving off-campus the following year. This means there were a lot of places around campus that we never had the chance to fully explore. Therefore, we concluded that we should attempt to go to every building, cafe, quad, and corner of campus that we had never been to. Here are the results.
The entirety of our “scavenger hunt” consisted of these places: Marcus Hall, Lederle Tower, Arnold House, the Integrated Sciences Building, the Life Sciences Labs, Skinner Hall, Goodell Hall, Munson Hall, Curry Hicks Cage, the Design Building, and the Studio Arts Building. (Disclaimer: I had already been to a few of these spots in the past, but not more than once or twice.) We started at Marcus Hall, which is in the math and engineering section of campus, and it wasn’t extremely interesting — we didn’t stay very long. Then we went to Lederle, which I actually had a class in freshman year, but they redid the whole first floor, so that was cool to see. Next, we went to Arnold House, because one of my friends has a class there. It was a cute little building, but we moved on.
Then we went to the ISB. I had only been in here briefly once before, and it is a beautiful building. There’s also a Starbucks in there (which I didn’t know about until a month ago!), but it was closed when we got there. The Life Sciences Labs were up next, and I was stunned at how beautiful this whole section of campus was. I couldn’t believe I had never seen it before; the grass was perfectly green, there were awesome study spots outside, and the buildings themselves looked futuristic in a way. The inside was just as impressive — there were posters of studies that had been conducted and an array of cool science facts along the walls. The whole thing was an experience.
From here, we walked through Skinner Hall, which is the nursing building. We didn’t stay for very long, but one of the most interesting things we saw was framed photos of nursing students from the early 1900s. They looked completely different than nurses do today! Then we walked a little further through campus and ended up at Goodell Hall. This was one of those buildings I knew I had been in once, then never again, so I hardly remembered it. However, I instantly recognized it as the place where I began my tour at UMass when I was a junior in high school — five whole years ago!
We went to the Curry Hicks Cage from here, which I had been to before, but we went to a new part of the building, which was cool. Then, we went to this tiny building next door called Munson Hall, which we didn’t know prior was an administrative building. It was a little eerie because we didn’t see a soul in there, and it was super quiet. It felt like we weren’t supposed to be in there (which we probably weren’t…). After that, we went to the Design Building and the Studio Arts building. I had been to the Design Building before, but one of my friends had never seen the rooftop garden before, so we briefly went up there. Highly recommend — it’s a great spot to study or just hang out with friends! The Studio Arts Building was beautiful and a perfect last stop. There was super cool artwork everywhere, lots of natural light, and we saw the hanging sculpture that was visible from the outside of the building. I loved it!
If you are a freshman, sophomore, or junior here at UMass, I highly recommend doing a scavenger hunt of some sort before your time here is up. It was so awesome to see all the places I had never been before, and it made me feel a lot better about graduating. It felt like closure in a sense; I am now leaving this campus with more knowledge of it than I had before.
Can’t get enough of HC UMass Amherst? Be sure to follow us on Instagram, listen to us on Spotify, like us on Facebook, and read our latest Tweets!