Adult Education: How to Find Your Way Around Campus

Going back to school can be both exciting and challenging for adults. There are many steps to the process and when people have walked through each task, they will hopefully reach a point where they are ready to travel to campus. However, walking onto campus can be intimidating for people, particularly if the school is fairly large. Therefore, having some sense of the campus geography can make the difference between a successful first week and a frustrating educational experience.

Here are a few thoughts on how to find one’s way around campus.

Website maps

One of the helpful parts of the Internet is that there are many resources and sites filled with information. Schools have increased their informational offerings to students by providing catalogs, guides, and contact information online. This includes campus maps, which can often be downloaded or printed out. Sometimes campus maps are even interactive so that students can magnify certain sections or see pictures of particular buildings. Granted, it does help if people have some level of computer savvy so that they can navigate through the site.

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Asking for help

Another way to find places on a college campus is to ask for directions. Too often people feel like they should have some sense of where they are going so they may be hesitant to look clueless. However, getting to class or to particular offices is important, which means that people must sometimes swallow their pride and ask people for directions. In most situations, people are happy to give people directions to the place that they want to go.

Leisurely visit

Finally, there is often value in stopping by the campus prior to the start of class. When people visit their intended school, they have the opportunity to search for buildings and rooms at their leisure. When the first day of school comes, people can be nervous enough as it is without having to be searching for their building. This is often why people are late to class the first day, because they did not budget enough time and they were outside wandering the campus. Coming to class late is obviously a bad way to start.

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Finding one’s way around campus is certainly possible if people take advantage of resources that are available. Most campuses know when their students will have trouble navigating the grounds and will provide them with some level of support. However, when people attend larger schools they may need to seek help on their own and not wait for it to come to them. Finding the right room is a key part of starting education out right so that people can focus on learning.