Will the Real Cartographers Please Stand Up?

Will the cartographers at JCU please stand up and do a service to your school? Note to all of those people who enjoy maps, enjoy reading maps, and otherwise enjoy knowing where you are--JCU is looking for people to hire.  Thus begins my tirade about map problems and receiving them from John Cabot University.

Yesterday (and sorry about the lack of post-homework really puts a damper on blogging.  Bum city.) I was scheduled to attend my Digital Photography class at the mysterious classroom at Platform 9 3/4.  So I went to the Tiber campus and decided to ask a few more obnoxious questions before wandering around Rome searching for a class of lost students. Conveniently enough at the welcome table there was survey about orientation. Hoo-rah.  That's right world, that survey was doomed from the start. On a scale of 1-5 (1 being poor, and 5 being good), how did you feel about Navigation 101? This girl drew a fat old "0" next to the 1 and circled that instead.  On the "Do you have anything else you want to share" section, I wrote an exemplary essay about how it was unsafe to misguide students by either giving them false information, poorly drawn maps, or not posting valuable information on the already overly crowded website. Not only that but it was a matter of school pride that the orientation leaders should know where all of the campuses are, regardless of whether they have personally taken a class there.  Feeling relatively cleansed after that little cathartic exercise, I wandered back up stairs and headed in the direction of what I assumed to be my class.

Walking, walking, turn here and suddenly those magical doors that seemed so ominous before were open.  Taking a chance, I walked through them, flashed my JCU ID (about the most useful thing they've given me) and was directed upstairs.  So these were some fancy almost spiral stairs-just a square shape.  Walk up those and hear voices coming from a room down the hall, there I find a small room with a table and chairs enough for the prof, and about 5 students. That left me with the floor and listening to a French man who has lived in Italy for 18 years.  Welcome to 2.5 hours of talking about photography. At least he's really excited about photography, he says things like "If you do not have your camera with you, take pictures on your telephone- click!"

I then walked back to the Guarini campus and met Kate for lunch and gelato, then to my Ancient Greek Art and Archaeology class with the ninja billy goat tour guide from Ostia Antica. After that class, I walked back to the Tiber campus, hung out there for a while, found the mysterious "Almost Corner Book Store" (may be hanging out there a lot, they're really nice), then went to Philosophy class. Instead of thinking about Plato, and caves, and how in the world I was going to log into MyJCU, I thought about Moua. What a dream boat. Then swing by the grocery store, and back to the apartment.

Moving on to today, I went to my Italian Cinema class after the daily expresso, and discovered that not only does he want us to buy a text book, he also wanted us to obtain elusive copies.  After class, I made about 4 stops to attempt to figure out what in the world he was talking about, and ended up paying a ghastly amount of money to the librarian who gave me instructions to this "copy point".  Enter: Another shoddy JCU map.

The thing I most enjoy about maps is being able to read the street names. I know, it's a perfectionist tendency of mine, but it's nearly necessary. Let's just say that it's a good thing that I borrowed Kate's nifty popup map. Otherwise I never would have even had an opportunity to find it. I walked down the main drag right outside of our apartment, straight along the bus line until this street that had been conveniently crossed out by the theoretically helpful black arrow-therefore making it impossible to read. It was a nice try, but not so very useful. So after staring at multiple different maps, I decided to walk southward, and hope that I landed somewhere I could actually identify on a map. Having just past through the Argentinian Sacred Site, the gods were with me, and I found myself lead to a tiny courtyard with an adorable fountain. Walking just a few steps further, I looked, by chance to my right and saw a room with copy machines. B-I-N-G-O. Done. And now I have a nifty little bound book of my readings for the semester. Golly Gee.

So now I think I'm going to make some din din, and enjoy one of Erica's delicious (and this is fate right here, she loves baking, I love eating=pure love) chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes. Just smear one all over my face.

Platform 9 and 3/4

This is going to be a short one. And an actual short one because there wasn't much actually going on.

As the last free day in Rome, we decided to take full advantage of this opportunity by sleeping in.  I then edit some speeches from the team back home, and whipped up some lunch.  The next thing on the list to do was to find this mysterious "Lgo. Fio 4" building where my morning class was going to be held. Not a big deal, there are ample amounts of resources to find that, and get it done.

Ah, but good old JCU never fails to disappoint me. They are so delightfully well informed. Molly and I walked to the Tiber campus to ask someone who had at least lived in Rome for longer than a week, and had maybe attended JCU for a bit. The conversation went as follows.
Kelsey: "Excuse me, but I was wondering if you could help me find the building my class is in tomorrow."
Woman 1: "Are you here for the walking tour?"
Student-Male: "What campus?"
Kelsey: "I honestly have no idea.  My schedule says Lgo. Fio 4"
Student-Male: "I've never been over there. [to Student-Female] Have you?"
Student-Female: "Yeah."
Woman: "Are you here for the walking tour?"
Student-Female: "Do you want me to show it to you?"
Kelsey: "Yes, that'd be great!"
SF: [circles stuff on map.  Says something about buses]
Kelsey: "Fantastic!"
[Exit Molly and Kelsey]

Wander wander wander.  Find the street. Looking, looking, looking..............dead pigeon......

Nothing.

Seriously, nothing. We spent close to 30 minutes walking around this area looking for something that could feasibly be a classroom. Nothing. Nada, zip, zilch.  From the frustrated sighs, and complaints, we decided to walk back in the general direction of the Guarini campus before heading to mass. The student at that desk hadn't actually been to that campus either, but she had another very crafty grey-scale map to help the problem. Too bad it wasn't legible, nor did it have an obvious location as to the purpose of the map. Once again, JCU, 'Over there' is not an appropriate response to asking for directions.

So the plan (since I still do not know where this classroom is) tomorrow is to wake up early, attempt to ask some more people for directions, go to the blurry location on the map, and either a) launch myself at a seemingly solid looking wall and hope that I'm actually attending Hogwarts, or b) wait. If no one else looks as lost as I am, I guess I'll read a book, or take some pictures. Well done digital photography class. Well done JCU.