Maps

I utterly failed to find the seminar about St. John's. (You'd think I'd have printed a map of MIT beforehand, but no.) And it is one of the most confusing places in the world to navigate--as well as one of the creepiest. Buildings are hidden behind each other, a number of them not on any street, and not arranged in any other sort of unifying geometric pattern that would make sense of their numbers. The newer buildings look like Gaudi decided that metal was a good thing--little bits of industrial surrealist hell. Combined with the utter desertion of everything, it's eerie. ("Like Gaudi decided metal was a good thing": these are models, but it looks like this.)

In response to this experience, and because I have 2 outings tomorrow, I have printed out maps of every major university in the Boston area, plus a subway map (just to be safe). The best thing would be one of those maps they give tourists that has all the detail, plus illustrations of landmarks. I navigated Rome quite well with one of these; though maybe Rome was just intuitive. I seem not to make maps in my head much.