As a graduate student, you tend to only see one building on campus, maybe two. I suppose it depend on your major, but graduate courses for a particular discipline tend to be held in the same building. I spent my time mainly between two buildings. On the rare occasion that I ventured out to a different building is was for some campus business that I never looked forward to. Who really enjoys dealing with the administration?

One of the most prominent features on campus was the six columns that stood in the middle of the lawn. They were the last remaining parts of the original administration building from the beginning of the university. I guess the old admin building burnt down. Even from the satellite photo, you can make out those darn columns. Since Google takes out people (I wonder how they do that), the lawn looks pristine. Normally there would be people scattered about, especially on a nice day. When this photo was taken, it looks warm. You might see people studying in the grass, sunbathing or playing Frisbee. The only time I saw the columns is if I walked off campus for lunch.

The large building south of the columns is the new administration building. All of the buildings here are part of the “red” campus. The next photo just seems cool. When they built the new biology building they made the sidewalk into a double-helix. I don’t think I ever noticed that, but it’s really obvious from the sky. I think I went into one of the buildings once. One of the buildings has a large hallway with stuffed, dead animals. All kinds. Ancient Missouri creatures. Other creatures.

Only my undergraduate school had an equivalent strange building. The archeology building had dead stuffed things too. Like Mammoths. I think it was recreated from bones though. The building was known for it’s bug collection. There were live Madagascar hissing cockroaches that you could pet. I don’t like bugs enough to ever pet a cockroach that covers my hand. The hissing is a bit much for me too. IckIck. My nephew thought it sounded like fun though. I told him about them when I saw him at Christmas.

So after chemistry classes, teaching freshmen and research, what did we do to relieve stress? Drink, of course. It’s a little known fact that chemists can really hold their liquor. Well, I can’t very well, but then I don’t weigh much. Even the professors could be seen drinking heavily at conferences. Who knew that chemistry was so full of such characters? I saw drinking habits that I would associate with writers…like Hemingway. The next installment will be stories of students, teaching and drinking. You will get all the who’s, wheres, whens and hows.