Let’s start with one thing I didn’t realize when I came to USC as a freshman. USC’s campus is small. It’s surprising for a school with almost 20,000 undergraduates and more graduate students to have a campus you can walk corner to corner in fifteen minutes. At 229 acres or under half a square mile, it makes it certain that you can walk between every class with ease. There’s a lot of benefits to a small campus: you always know vaguely where you are, you run into friends all the time, you don’t have to rush to make it to a class. My favourite part is that it means that every part of campus is filled with something and you can explore for all four years and not find every secret. It also means that you get your own places.
For me, all the places I love ended up being right next to the departments I’m in, biomedical engineering and classics. Right behind the biomedical engineering building or DRB as it’s known to only people in this major, are the play sets for SDA. People can set up shoots in those buildings or hold productions, but just behind those is a small courtyard. Given that DRB is already in an out of the way corner of campus this little courtyard is just about as secluded as it gets on campus. That fact alone would make it one of my favorite places, but to push it over the top, it also has a swinging bench! Y’all when I tell you I love a swinging bench, I’m significantly underselling my obsession. Those things really have it all. You get all the fun parts of sitting down while also getting to satiate my need to constantly be in some kind of motion. I’m partial to walks at night, and this spot always ends up being a good midpoint on them.
Just by virtue of being a biomedical engineer, it should be known that I’m a terribly indecisive person. As such, I cannot choose just one favorite place on campus. The other spot I claim as mine is just outside the Classics department in between Doheny and the Physical Education building (which describes nothing of what is held in that building including multiple SDA classes and the entire classics department). While the spot on this one is a favorite of mine since it’s so centrally located on campus, yet there’s rarely anyone who passes through or takes notice of it, what makes me really appreciate it is the sculpture in the center. I don’t know what to call it other than a sculpture even though that doesn’t really do it justice. I usually call it a not-fountain. I say this because it very clearly should be a fountain even though it isn’t. With four lion heads on top and a wide circle below it, the sculpture screams that it’s a fountain. This fountain-like nature reminds me of home. (For those that don’t know Kansas City is the city of fountains). Either way it’s always my favorite place to come on an early morning or a late night and just work on essays or really anything.
