Lavatorial logic
Nov. 2nd, 2011 05:32 pmI feel I made a bit of a breakthrough at work today. No, not in how to traumatise students avoid traumatising students, but in a matter of more mundane significance. I worked out the layout of the toilets in our main teaching building. This building contains nearly all the lectures and seminars that take place on campus, plus a fair few academic departments, so it is naturally large and sprawling. Most of it is on a grid system (two main corridors and half a dozen 'link corridors'), with a few random outcrops. There is a very smart bit around the principal's office, a flashy new-ish corridor where the classroom computers generally work, and the rest is a mildly disturbing example of the best of seventies architecture. Lots of concrete and glass, badly-lit stairwells and so on.
I have a slightly weak bladder. I can hold on if I have to, but will use a bog if I get the chance. This is partly because I use coffee as a stage prop in class. I've often found myself using the really grotty bogs (there are two possibilities for what is smeared over the sanitary towel bin, and neither make me want to touch it - and there's no guarantee that the floor has merely been dirtied by wet muddy shoes) because I didn't know where else to find one on that particular floor.
Now I've worked it out. For most of the building, the loos are located near a link corridor or a stairwell, and probably both. And if you're a woman standing near a men's room, you have the choice of going to the opposite end of the link corridor or up/down a flight of stairs. I shared this with two of my students, who seemed to find it useful.
It's a small thing, but it makes life easier...
I have a slightly weak bladder. I can hold on if I have to, but will use a bog if I get the chance. This is partly because I use coffee as a stage prop in class. I've often found myself using the really grotty bogs (there are two possibilities for what is smeared over the sanitary towel bin, and neither make me want to touch it - and there's no guarantee that the floor has merely been dirtied by wet muddy shoes) because I didn't know where else to find one on that particular floor.
Now I've worked it out. For most of the building, the loos are located near a link corridor or a stairwell, and probably both. And if you're a woman standing near a men's room, you have the choice of going to the opposite end of the link corridor or up/down a flight of stairs. I shared this with two of my students, who seemed to find it useful.
It's a small thing, but it makes life easier...