My favorite thing about the first day of classes is getting utterly lost in a familiar place.

Just as some children are born without arms or legs or certain vital enzymes, so was I brought into this world with no sense of direction. You wouldn’t scold that poor child and ask him to grow a new limb or not turn bright red when sharing the room with a bottle of tequila, would you?

Telling me to learn my way around accomplishes about as much, with the added threat of annoyed, uncoordinated violence aimed in your direction.

Last fall, I had classes in David Rittenhouse Laboratory five days a week. The first few weeks actually brought me close to tears as I wandered those musty, physics-haunted halls in search of classroom ZF892, which inevitably appeared at the end of the hallway at the top of the stairs that only go from the second to the third floor on Tuesdays. But by the end of the semester, I felt confident that I could find any room in DRL. Give me a room number and I’d show you the correct path through that architectural monstrosity.

And then, one year later, I had a neuroscience lab in the basement. Did you know DRL had a basement? Neither did anyone else. Getting there involves fording a moat, bargaining with a sphinx and navigating a labyrinth until you can find and kill a freaking minotaur.

Needless to say, DRL once again laughed in my face, and I continued my tradition of leaving the apartment on time and arriving in class twenty minutes late.

And that’s just one building.

So as I strike out this morning, trusty map guiltily hidden in an inconspicuous pocket of my bag, book list yet to be glanced at, I hope that the Penn community will take pity on me as it has always taken pity on confused, lost souls.

If not, well, I’ll meet you at the minotaur.

Tags: DRL, minotaurs

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Penn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.