Five Senses of Various Parts of Campus

In this Issue: reflecting on a walk around campus

Yesterday was an absolutely glorious day. I had a meeting in the Wellbeing Center, and then decided to take a walk around campus after it concluded, so I could see what your students were seeing and bring it back to you Five Senses style, telling you what I saw, felt, heard, etc.

To orient you to my route, I started at the Wellbeing Center and made a giant loop of campus. On the image below, follow the red arrows after the Start box. The purple is the end of the walk after I stopped at Campus Grounds for coffee.

Here are the Five Senses of Various Parts of Campus…

I saw…

• Several students coming in to the Wellbeing Center in exercise clothes.
• Posters on easels with sticky dots on them; our Bicentennial Space Planning team was having an open house asking students, faculty, and staff to weigh in on their campus spaces wish list and several folks were looking at the posters and thinking
• Two male students with tennis gear walking towards the Wellbeing Center
• A female student in what looked like ballet gear – leotards and a dance skirt – headed towards her residence hall. Later, I saw another student in a near identical outfit (ballet class must have just ended)
• Yard signs for various campus events and/or resources: Face to Face with Magic Johnson, the Passio app (for the shuttle schedule), the Wesley Foundation (Methodist student ministry group), and more
• Students sitting on various tables throughout campus: benches near Luter Hall, Poteat Hall, and on the Quad at the umbrella tables outside of Zick’s and outside Campus Grounds
• Two students throwing a football near Wait Chapel
• A Wake Facilities truck right outside Wait Chapel; I was hoping to see evidence of set up for Thursday’s ESPN visit, but did not see anything unusual
• A red rose and what looked like a note on each of the benches outside Wait Chapel that memorialize two students who were killed in an accident in early September 1996
• About a 50-50 mix of students in pants and shorts; the weather was suitable for either one (aside: baggy, wide leg pants are in for female students)
• Headphones or earbuds on students who seemed to be studying outside (i.e., at tables with laptops open and sitting solo)
• Flowers and shrubs at various points of campus: nice beds of hostas in the shade on the Quad; a row of lovely hydrangeas near Salem and Winston halls
• A surprising amount of open seats in Campus Grounds – I was expecting at that hour every seat to be occupied by studying students, but I easily found a spot to wait after I ordered my flat white

I heard…

• The high pitched pinging of the card readers in the Wellbeing Center as students scanned in to use the gym
• The metallic clank of weight machines as students exercised
• Snippets of conversations as people were considering how they wanted to weigh in on the Space Planning posters
• Someone call my name – and when I turned around, it was a colleague I hadn’t seen in a while
• Two students talking as they walked by me on the sidewalk. One of them said something about their schedule in high school, so I suspect they might have been ’29s
• A group of four or five female students near Angelou – they were laughing as they walked down the sidewalk
• The F bomb being dropped by students at one of the Zick’s tables
• Two female students ahead of me having a conversation abruptly lowered their voices when they saw me turn the corner near them; all I made out was ‘hold his hand‘ and admittedly I was intrigued
• The clip clip clip of someone’s shoes – was definitely not soft-soled sneakers, but something harder on the sidewalk
• The rustling of the wind in the trees

I smelled…

• Coffee in Campus Grounds
• Clean, fresh air. Possibly some pollen too.

I felt…

• Happy as I saw my colleague and gave them a hug (I am a hugger)
• Nice and cool as I walked down the shaded sidewalks; there are a lot of trees shading everything
• Wind in my hair – there was a nice breeze
• Warm sun on my arms as I walked across the Quad
• Really happy, calm, and peaceful. The weather was so nice, and everyone I saw looked happy, and the vibe on campus was just really good.

I tasted…

• A delicious flat white from Campus Grounds. And let me offer a shout out to the barista, who told me it was their first day on the job – you did well!

That’s your Five Senses from my walk yesterday. Hope that gave you a feeling of being with us on campus.

And a Pro Tip: if your Deac isn’t taking a 15-20 minute walk every day – not for exercise, just to chill – I highly recommend it. I felt so happy having walked around and spent some time just noticing the world and being grateful for the beautiful day. I hope that might work for your Deacs, too.