I've gotten lost in a lot of buildings on campus. Probably every single one of them.
Here's a list of my favorites and how to best navigate them:
Carroll Hall
I spend 90 percent of my day in the basement of Carroll. Yes, there is a basement. It’s probably not as well known because people go in and never come out. I can’t tell you how many times I had to explain to lost J-School visitors how to get to the first floor. The basement is on different levels, so stairs don’t always take you a different floor.
Tip: Find a flight of stairs and just keep climbing. If you feel like you’ve gone too far, you’re almost to the main floor.
Manning Hall
Am I the only one creeped out by this building? I mean the main floor seems nice with its library full of children’s books, comfy chairs and wall quotes from “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” But the upper floors are dark and the halls are lined with lockers...kind of like middle school.
If you have a class up there or if for some reason you want to relive being 13 again, make sure you go through the right staircase. The left and right staircases take you to different places.
Tip: Choose your staircase wisely.
Swain Hall
Swain is actually two different buildings, ya’ll! I was super confused when I got my class schedule this semester and I was to go to Swain 200A. I looked everywhere for this room before caving and asking a professor for directions. I was in the wrong building. There is a Swain that is just a front, but the real Swain is directly behind the first one.
Tip: If your room number has a letter in it, that probably means your classroom is in a secret building somewhere.
Phillips Hall
Across the street from front Swain there’s a building that doesn’t quite look right. Phillips Hall looks more like it belongs at Duke, and the floor plan is so confusing it was probably designed by Dookies, too. Phillips includes dark, creepy hallways, random stairways to nowhere and a secret basement where the biomedical engineering majors make prosthetic arms.
Tip: Don’t go in buildings designed by Dookies.
The Gillings School of Global Public Health
This is one of the coolest buildings on campus with its glass walls and super cool staircase (if you couldn’t tell already, I’m kind of a staircase fanatic). It’s a great building if you know where you’re going. But if you’re like me, you never know where you’re going. Once I was late for an interview because I went to the wrong part of the building. Someone in the office I ended up in had to walk me across the building to the right area, and as soon as she left, I got lost again.
Tip: Get a guide to walk you to all the way to where you need to go and then follow you around to make sure you don’t get lost anywhere else.
The Union
OK don’t laugh, but I totally thought the third floor of the Union was the second floor until like a month ago.
Tip: Read the signs.
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