I'm starting grad school part-time this fall at URI. Yesterday I went to the graduate school orientation. Now, I graduated from MIT about 2.5 years ago, and after my 4 years there, I got pretty used to the MIT way of doing things. At MIT the buildings are numbered. They have names, but they are only used for a few buildings (the Green Building and Student Center come to mind). The majority of the buildings are referred to by number--26, 2, 4, etc. The building numbers have a general, though not very specific, order to their layout (the single digits are generally around Killian, with the evens on one side, odds on another, and Ws are west of Mass Ave, Ns are north of the railroad tracks and Es are east of Ames Street--with NW north of the tracks and west of Mass Ave--you get the idea).
My whole point in describing this, is to bitch about the campus map I was provided by URI. When I first looked at the map, I saw numbers. I smiled to myself, thinking that it would be similar to MIT. Then I looked at the key at the bottom and noticed the list of building names. Cool. I can deal with that, I thought. Then I tried to use the map to figure out what a building's name. It turns out that it is almost impossible, due to the fact that the building names are in alphabetical order, and the only reference given on the map is numerical. So, to figure out what the name of a building is, you have to look through the list of names until you come across the number of building shown on the map.
To complicate matters further, URI has provided a grid (numbers across the top, letters down the side) to "help" you locate the buildings, as there is no method to the numbering scheme--the numbers must have been given as the buildings were constructed. Unlike MIT, there aren't different areas to campus, so there is no subsectioning of east, west, or north of main campus. Also, few like numbers are grouped together. One would think that building 3 would be somewhat near to building 2, but one would be quite wrong.
I have little experience with other schools' campus layouts, so by bitching about URI's layout, I may be including many other schools. But, damn, it was hard as hell to figure out what the building next to the one I was in was called. In that respect, the map is pretty much useless.
My whole point in describing this, is to bitch about the campus map I was provided by URI. When I first looked at the map, I saw numbers. I smiled to myself, thinking that it would be similar to MIT. Then I looked at the key at the bottom and noticed the list of building names. Cool. I can deal with that, I thought. Then I tried to use the map to figure out what a building's name. It turns out that it is almost impossible, due to the fact that the building names are in alphabetical order, and the only reference given on the map is numerical. So, to figure out what the name of a building is, you have to look through the list of names until you come across the number of building shown on the map.
To complicate matters further, URI has provided a grid (numbers across the top, letters down the side) to "help" you locate the buildings, as there is no method to the numbering scheme--the numbers must have been given as the buildings were constructed. Unlike MIT, there aren't different areas to campus, so there is no subsectioning of east, west, or north of main campus. Also, few like numbers are grouped together. One would think that building 3 would be somewhat near to building 2, but one would be quite wrong.
I have little experience with other schools' campus layouts, so by bitching about URI's layout, I may be including many other schools. But, damn, it was hard as hell to figure out what the building next to the one I was in was called. In that respect, the map is pretty much useless.
posted by Amanda at 10:28 AM
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