The Official Guide to the UNL Campus
Writing this a year after it happened, I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure what it was I had to do in my first week, I know it was a lot of admin. I was having trouble with my courses because, despite studying film, I was only able to get onto one film class that semester, mostly because we had to enrol in about May when I was halfway through my exams that I needed to do to actually get there in the first place. So I was stuck doing Creative Writing 101, Philosophy 101 and History of Modern Europe 103, as well as Introduction to Film History 213. Consequently, I spent most of my first week nagging various people to allow me onto the Ethnicity in Film class (which I did eventually get onto).
Anyway that day I had to go and do some stuff in the union, who’s location I hadn’t the slightest idea of. Luckily our welcome packs had a map and I stumbled out into a very rainy Lincoln wearing just jeans, trainers and a thin jacket- I hadn’t packed any winter stuff because it wouldn’t fit in my luggage, my parents would send it over in a few weeks- and got absolutely and uncomfortably soaked. Not only this, but the campus was huge, twice the size of the one in Lancaster I’d spent the previous year navigating, with grand buildings and wide streets with nice bits of grass and a bloody football stadium that can hold 100,000 people. I knew there was stadium on campus, but I mean. This thing was huge, and it was just plonked there next to some lecture halls and a quick walk across a parking lot to the school library. Next to it was the Nebraska state museum that had a big statue of a mammoth outside of it. Again, why was this on the campus? It was amazing, and every building followed suit in being much too big and grand for a university. It was so weird as well, I saw literally no one. In the half hour it took me to get from Schramm to the union I didn’t see a single person. Us exchange students were told to come early to get extra information about settling in and everything like that, but I have to say walking through a deserted campus this size was very strange. I felt like the guy in the Twilight zone. Where is everybody?? Haha. It gave me a chance to get a grip of the general logistics of the place- those being that the place is just huge.
A Map of Campus (key below) - click on the map for a clearer online version.
Schramm is right at the top (75). The Union is near the bottom (39). How stupid, do you think, is it to walk that far in hurricane style weather with out a coat on? Thats the intelligence level I was working on at this point.
The student union in Lancaster is falling apart, the only reason I ever go there is to as a shortcut to lectures and always one of the automatic doors is broken and propped open with a brick or something. The union here was enormous and filled with TVs, sofas, big assembly halls. There was also a number of food and drinks chains like subway and a pizza place called Valentino’s that didn’t actually sell pizza, but greasy fat slabs of shit. After eating at Valentino’s, you couldn’t hold anything for a week without it slipping out of your greased-up hands- they loved it in Nebraska and to be fair you do start to develop a dependency on food like this very quickly, I found. Anyway, the student union was so big and kitted out, you could literally live there. Outside of it was a big fountain with huge rocks in it, I think it was another sculpture. I ran into the union to get out of the rain and collected my ‘N-card’, which I didn’t know you needed but is essential to a lot of things like getting into every single building on campus and eating, just to name two. The N-card is the key to Nebraskan living, along with runzas and cowboy boots.
My actual N-card with me now, not much difference really, my face is a bit rounder now I suppose.
The rest of the afternoon was spent drying off, I ate at one of the dining halls with Elise and her roommate who was Rwandan and would promptly change rooms (probably because of Elise). There’s a large Rwandan population at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln which sounds very random because you wouldn’t expect Trump’s middle America to even accept something so foreign orientated, yet alone encourage it. You also wouldn’t expect many people from Rwanda to be entirely excited about moving to Trump’s middle America, especially after hearing a few descriptions of Kigali, where most of the Rwandan students came from and that sounded insanely modern.
The dining hall was (again) massive, we didn’t go to the one opposite Schramm (HSS), but Cather, which was a 15 minute walk or so through campus. It was very sheek and modern too. The dining halls were essentially a bunch of buffets with pizza, pasta, chicken, Chinese, salads etc and I was determined to eat as much as possible given that I had to pay $11 despite actually having meal plan because it didn’t start until the day after. In fact, I was determined to eat as much as possible all year because the meal plan itself cost about $1000 but allowed you to eat as much as you can stuff in your fat American face.
The food was always unhealthy, too. I actually arrived in Nebraska as a vegetarian, partly for the environment and partly to impress my ex-girlfriend, with whom I had just recently broken up with. I certainly didn’t leave Nebraska as a vegetarian. I didn’t leave September a vegetarian. This was, of course, mainly down to the terrible, insulting veggie options, which was limited to steamed asparagus or peas. Or cheese pizza. And I didn’t feel like spending my year abroad malnourished or deficient in a various ways. I don’t have an excuse for eating meat now, but I’ll go back to being a veggie soon. Promise (I’m really bad at keeping promises). The food at UNL was very inconsistent, some days I really enjoyed it, others I hated it and if you ever find yourself dining at one of these refined eateries they have on the Nebraska campus (there are 3 run by the school) I would recommend staying clear of their interpretations of Mexican cuisine, but definitely try the Chinese, so take what you want from that.