You know, I don't know if this is a commonly used phrase or not. My friends and I use it. So just in case you aren't familiar with it, "walking your schedule" consists of leaving your dorm/apartment/house and walking to each of your classrooms in order before the first day of class.
Why would I do this? I know where the buildings are. Yeah, but my question is: do you know where the classrooms are? Do you know where the stairs in the building are? Do you know the door to the building that is closest to your previous class?
Enough of the questions. Below are four reason why I suggest walking your schedule.
1. You need to know where the classroom is. You will be having class there, and I'm hoping you will be attending. :) Look at a campus map or online to find the building if you need to. If the semester starts in the middle of a week, I've often found that the buildings are unlocked starting on Monday. The professors do need to be able to prepare for the first day. And if you can't get inside, at least you will know where the building is and how long it takes to get to and from there.
2. You will only have ___ minutes between classes. Fill the blank in as appropriate. For me, a typical MWF schedule has 10 minutes in between classes and a TTh schedule has 15 minutes between classes. Now if you are on a tiny campus or know your way around already, maybe this won't be a problem. While I do know my campus well, it is far from tiny. Last year I had back-to-back MWF classes in buildings that are somewhat far away from each other. Not all the way across campus, but still a good distance. In fact, Google Maps says it takes 7 minutes to walk from the back door of the first building to the front of the second building. That is not considering the first professor running over by a minute or two, me packing my backpack, turning my homework in, walking down 3 flights of stairs or the fact that the second class was up a large hill. I tried to bike it once. Or maybe twice. And then decided to walk the rest of the semester; the hill was too large. Basically, just be aware that you may have to walk very quickly to make it from one class to the next. There's no time for you to get lost or turned around. And nobody wants to be late on the first day of class.
3. There will be so many people. As I just mentioned, nobody wants to be late on the first day of class. Or the first week, really. After a while, they start thinking, "Oh, I could lay in bed just another minute. Or five." And realize that they can walk in just before the professor starts and nothing bad will happen. Or they will stop coming to class altogether. I don't recommend this option. But the first week is crazy. There are people everywhere. (Well, at my school there are people everywhere anyway.) This is when people line up outside the classroom before the previous class gets out. And then, because they are clogging up the hallway, people have a hard time getting out of the classroom or out of the building. And yes, I contribute to this problem during the first few weeks. But I do try to not be oblivious to the world around me.
4. It's fun! I always get excited for the start of a new school year. And with having two totally different semesters in each school year, it's kind of like I get twice as many starts to the year.
How about you? Do you walk your schedule before the first day of class?
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