Hey, SUNY Old Westbury! Give me a sign… any sign… big… small… on the door… any sign at all!… let me explain my plea.
I’m a new SOW student in the MALS program seeking my masters. I started last year with all the classes online. This semester is my first year on campus and I approached my first day with anticipation along with some expected trepidation.
I live near the SUNY Old Westbury Campus and I have frequented the campus’s picturesque trails and even used the expansive parking lots to teach my wife how to drive a stick-shift car. For these reasons, I figured I knew the campus and felt that I was familiar with all its twists and turns. My first class on campus was to start at 4:45pm. At 3:45pm I turned off of Route 107 and onto campus, confident that I would find my class with ample time.
As I traversed the entrance drive, I looked down at my schedule, it read “NAB- New Academic Building.” I slowed all the green wood road signs, reading what I could as seemingly all-knowing fellow students whizzed by me quite possibly cursing, “dumb freshmen.”
As I passed the last green sign, still not seeing anything about a “New Academic Building” I realizing I was now heading off another side of campus- time was ticking by. I started to talk to the dashboard of my car, “Well it obviously can’t be called, new academic center forever… did I miss a building called, ‘academic center?’” The dashboard, not surprisingly, didn’t answer my question though its analog clock picked at my anxiety with every sweep of its hands.
I decided driving through the woods of the back campus wasn’t going to get me anywhere close to the academic buildings. BTW, do you know there are horse stables on the far side?… There are, I found those! They are really beautiful- but clearly not the “New Academic Building.” I backtracked and decided to park in one of the parking lots near some seemingly classroom-like buildings. Clutching my schedule in my hand, scanning each building, hoping for a beacon of a sign, I found nothing. I approached a student and asked with desperation my question of the day, “do you know where the ‘New Academic Building’ is?” Her response summed up my situation with great accuracy, “Oh, my-friend, you are sorely in the wrong place.” She then proceeded with great care as if she was talking to a baby (or a typical guy with clearly no directional sense) turn-by-turn how I was to get back to the academic area of campus. “Sorry my directions are a little confusing,” she said with a shrug, “but that’s the way.” I thanked her and headed to my car. I preceded to pass more buildings. Still, none of them said, “New Academic Building” but I decided to park in one of the bigger lots and walk (run) to the buildings, time was wasting. I was about to be that student running into the classroom dazed-and-confused on the first day, surely setting a bad first impression on my new professor.
I started to ask around again- anyone I passed- obviously desperate, I wanted someone to grab my hand and say, “this way” and drag me as if it were Pre-K.
I was pointed from building to building and even through buildings. At last, I made it to a brick building that looked fairly “New.” I spotted someone that looked like a professor, my words halted with my heavy breathing. “That’s it, right there,” he answered, pointing at the building. I took his word for it… yet my head instinctively panned up in search for letters at the top- Nothing. I looked to the right of the door, nothing. I looked to the left of the door, still nothing. I even looked for a piece of paper taped on the door telling myself, “Well, it is the new academic center… maybe it’s so new they didn’t get a chance to put up a real sign so simply hand printed one…” Nope, still nothing, but I went in.
Once inside I realized I was in the right place. It was clearly, state-of-the-art, and I was clearly in the “New” Academic Building… but I’d like to backtrack to the direction of this piece: A simple plea from a new student, “give me a sign… any sign… big… small… on the door… any sign at all…”
