by Jason Kramer, edited by Tomas Acosta
The walk from Oak Summit to the Murphy Building is a trek that the media & communication majors are far too familiar with. Myself included in that group, has a majority of my classes held in that building so I find myself walking to it three to five days of the week. In this article, I want to break down how it feels being a student having to make this 1,000 step walk nearly every morning.
This path marked on the map is a different path than the one that I would normally take, however I believe it is important to talk about this path since it is the one that my roommate took me on during my first day of living at Oak. So this route is the path I used for the first couple of days. This path is following Easton Road down until Limkiln, crossing into campus and walking to Murphy. The reason that I gave up this route after a week of traveling is due to the problems that I have walking.
I have a short achilles tendon, this means that a tendon in my heel is short, so everytime that I have to walk that tendon has to stretch and that puts me in a lot of pain after only walking for a short amount of time. This problem is largely avoided by the stretching I do and the inserts I have in my shoes to help me, however it is still an issue when it comes to carrying heavy weight, walking uphill, and walking fast. The path of Easton Road goes very uphill, and there is even a bridge area that is next to housing and goes over a road. This uphill area has caused me a lot of pain in the past, especially when my classes require me to carry a laptop. The laptop that I have, and have had for 8 years now, is thick and heavy. So carrying a backpack with all of my notebooks and my thick laptop, and walking uphill for about 4 minutes lead to me being in intense pain even before reaching Arcadia’s campus. On my latest excursion doing this path I made it about 2:46 seconds before the pain started to settle in, and it took me 3:24 to reach the crosswalk to make it onto campus. This crosswalk had become my favorite part of the journey thanks to the red light I arrived at, meaning I was able to stand still and cease walking so that my heels wouldn’t be working overtime. The advice one might give me is that I should walk slower, and sit down in places to catch my breath, reset my pain, and to take my time. The issue is, my classes have a set start time and I have had classes as early as 8:30 in Murphy, I do not have the luxury of taking my time walking.
Walking on campus goes better depending on the path you take, I avoid the stone path with the names of all the previous graduates given how uphill it is. I also never walk uphill to the path that leads behind both Brubaker and Easton. I have purposefully chosen the flatter parts to walk near. I reached the dining hall at 6:23. At 7:16 into my walk I was finally feeling the weather, it was about 72 degrees and I had foolishly decided to wear a flannel. I took the circular path around the Harber Green that put me across from the entrance to the Commons at around 8:50. Around this point is when the walk was really getting to me, the pain I felt in my feet, the heat all around me, and walking by the doors to the commons where I usually eat was a lot of sensations all at once. Murphy Hall just so happens to be the point on campus that is the furthest away from the Oak Summit apartments which allows for a lot of thoughts of defeat to set in. Just after another minute I reached the entrance to Brubaker. My normal path keeps me on the outside, which is the path I took today given the sun being out. On worse days, like those rainy, snowy, or cold days, I walk into Brubaker and stay on the ground floor and leave outside of the Easton Cafe. After passing the Easton Cafe I take the stairs nearby the pond, the only staircase that I have to go up and it can be really breathtaking under certain conditions like my feet already feeling like they are about to give out and detach themselves from my legs.
I reached the top of the steps at 11:27 into the walk, and the end is in sight now. I can see Murphy and the door A-2 with the card swipe I have to do in order to enter the building. After another 56 seconds of awkwardly walking slightly uphill to reach the top of the hill Murphy sits on, I am finally able to reach the inside of the building at minute 12:23 of my walk. I have finally made it inside of Murphy, 12 minutes of straight walking, my feet on fire, and about to collapse and I still have yet to make it to the classroom that I have to go to. While the inadequate clothes and the heat was entirely a user error and a skill issue on this particular day, the walk is even more unbearable on rainy days and more annoying on extremely windy days.
There was a newspaper article that was published in 1996, the main article was about various crimes taking place on campus, however the part that I want to focus on is near the very end that even in 1996 people were talking about their issues with the walk from Boyer Hall to Murphy. The thing that they mention is how dark that pathway gets, and while that issue is largely fixed now, I find it extremely interesting that this walk has always been criticized. I am also familiar with doing this long walk in the dark as some classes held in Murphy start at 7 or 8pm and end at 10pm.
This walk is awful, I would recommend it to no one who has even the slightest amount of trouble walking. To make matters worse, sometimes this class is the only class you might have for hours, or in particular circumstances that I have found myself in you might walk from Oak Summit to Murphy at 10 in the morning only to find out the only class you have until 4 is canceled. This is the walk that broke me and finally made me seriously consider getting my driver’s license.
Leave a Reply