<p>maybe this is just freshman student jitters, but I’m kinda worried about knowing my way around the campus when I move in. I did go visit my dorm building, but I don’t really know where all the activities are. any tips or advice?</p>
<p>The O-Book (PDF on the 2012 site, and hard copy when you get here) has a labeled map on the back. </p>
<p>If you want to study up now, take a look at the pathways and building names at [UChicago</a> Maps | Campus](<a href=“http://maps.uchicago.edu/campus.shtml]UChicago”>http://maps.uchicago.edu/campus.shtml)</p>
<p>The areas you’ll need to worry about aside from your dorm are the Quads, everything in North Campus, the nearer parts of East Campus (East of the Quads online), and the buildings on the Science Quad (not marked online, but consisting of Crerar, Kersten, Hinds and the Bookstore) in West Campus.</p>
<p>The rest of campus is mostly just the professional schools (Med, Law, Business, Policy), apartments, and things like the K-12 school that you won’t ever need to visit.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about learning anything more than your dorm and Reynolds Club (where you check in, 57th/University Ave) before you arrive. You can always ask just about anyone on campus for directions and maps are posted here and there. You’ll only need to learn buses right away if you live in Shoreland and Broadview, in which case that will all be explained when you arrive. Events will all be listed as a room number in a building or just the building if it is something like a theater with an obvious main venue.</p>
<p>There are 1,300 incoming freshman that are worried about this, not to mention the fact that a considerable percentage of that number has never even been to the United States. Point is, relax a little, I’m sure there are aides paid to help you around.</p>
<p>Sort of. </p>
<p>There will be one or two people in the middle of the quads for the first day or two with maps, but you’ll have solo appointments that you’ll have to seek directions for after that.</p>
<p>You knew someone was going to say this: Get a life! Except, I understand, you probably had a life, but your life is in the middle of its second week of college and isn’t paying attention to you right now. So . . . maybe watch all seven seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer back-to-back? The Sopranos? Das Ring Der Niebelungen?</p>
<p>More seriously: Yes, there are maps. And Google street-view, if you’re really hardcore. And many buildings have addresses, which makes them even easier to find. And there’s hardly anywhere you will have to go where at least 20 (if not 1,300) other people won’t be going at about the same time, and other people going someplace next door, and everyone interested in meeting each other, so really it’s not hard to ask directions and make friends while you are hunting for the right building.</p>
<p>In recent history few if any University of Chicago first-years have been permanently lost during O-Week. Or had their academic careers seriously compromised. Even if they miss an appointment. (Which I’ll bet happens all the time, not so much because people can’t find buildings, but because they can’t wake up.)</p>
<p>You made it through high school. You have an excellent academic record. You were accepted at the University of Chicago. Chances are, you have the intellectual and/or social skills necessary to negotiate its campus. Believe in yourself!</p>
<p>This is the FUN part of going off to college – learning to explore! Consider it practice for being reposonsible for finding (and getting) your own education.</p>
<p>The numbered streets are easy. Just learn the east-to-west sequence of the north-south running streets.</p>
<p>Be happy you’re not in Boston!</p>
<p>Us O-Aides will be living with you and can answer pretty much any question you have, not to mention we’ll probably throw enough information at you to satiate you for a couple of days :)</p>
<p>As long as you can make it to your dorm you should be good to go!</p>
<p>Seriously now, the UofC campus is so compact that you can learn most of it within a day, at least where the parts are that are relevant to an undergrad: The reg, Harper, Bookstore, Cobb (where a lot of undergrad classes are…).</p>
<p>Next, you’ll probably spend fall quarter discovering things like the various coffee shops, often tucked away in basements of various buildings, Seminary Coop, stores along 57th and 53rd, and so forth. </p>
<p>Nothing is very far. None of the routes are winding or confusing. </p>
<p>You will do fine.</p>
<p>My S holds the world record in being disoriented/lost and he reported no directional stress O-week, like nmdad says, you will do fine.</p>
<p>As others have mentioned, the campus is on a grid.</p>
<p>Getting downtown can be a tad more confusing (I still have friends who don’t really know their way around!) but you’ll be traveling in a group for most of O-Week if you go downtown, and you can always be one of those people who never learns how to get downtown and always relies on people like me who have inherited an internal compass from their father’s side of the family.</p>
<p>You will be fine. If your feet are wet, you went too far east and are standing in Lake Michigan.</p>