In addition to our three all-you-can-eat dining halls, there are four food court style dining
options in Talley as well as One Earth Cuisine where you can get food from around the world.
And there are also lots of meeting and club spaces where we’ll host a club fair at the
beginning of each year where our over 700 organizations will meet.
In addition, we have our bookstore where you can get NC State swag as well as textbooks
and school supplies.
And Talley is also home to all of our student support services such as the Women’s Center,
GLBT Center, and Multicultural Student Affairs.
To my right, we have Carmichael Gymnasium.
It’s undergoing construction that will be finished in October 2020, but it will add
cool new features like a teaching kitchen and a sprint ramp.
Carmichael is still fully operational where students can take two PE credits towards their
degree and also sign up for free group fitness classes online in their free time such as
pilates and yoga.
Behind me, we have Holmes Hall named after the first African American student to receive
a degree at NC State.
Holmes is home to walk-in advising for any student but is also home to our Exploratory
Studies Village.
Our Exploratory Studies Program is available to students who have not yet decided on a
major, and they will live and learn together to take courses that will allow them to figure
out which major aligns best with their talents and interests.
Next to Holmes we also have our Student Health Center where students can see a doctor right
on campus.
And next to Student Health, we have Witherspoon Student Center which is one of our two student
centers here on campus.
Named after the first African American professor at NC State, Witherspoon is home to our African
American Cultural Center, our student media suite, as well as the student cinema where
students can see free movies and get free popcorn.
Right now we are surrounded by several of our residence halls here on campus.
All freshmen are required to spend their first year here at NC State living on campus in
one of our three residence hall styles: hall, suite, or hotel.
In a hall style dorm, you and your roommate will share a room, and there is a large bathroom
that accommodates everyone who lives on your hall.
Whereas in suite style, you and your roommate will share a room.
There will be three to four other rooms in your suite, and then all eight to ten students
will share a bathroom that gets cleaned and maintained by University Housing, as opposed
to our hotel style where you and your roommate will share a room with a bathroom connected
that is just for the two of you.
My roommate and I met through a group Facebook page before my freshman year, and we enjoyed
living in a hotel style our first year here on campus.
Our campus is bisected by train tracks with three different tunnels that will take you
from one side of our campus to the other.
Behind me we have the Free Expression Tunnel and while it is tradition for students to
spray paint in the tunnel sometime before they graduate, anyone can come and freely
express themselves.
Usually, you’ll see students wishing happy birthday to a friend or roommate or clubs
announcing events they’re holding on campus that they’d like students to come and check
out.
Now we have reached the academic side of our campus and the Brickyard.
With the exception of Hill Library and the Atrium, all of the buildings surrounding us
are home to science courses for our students.
The Atrium is another food court style dining option here on campus, and it’s connected
to Hill Library, which is our traditional library here at NC State.
There are nine floors in Hill that get quieter as you go up, so you can choose your noise
level, but there are also many group study and collaborative work spaces.
In Hill we also have a Maker Space with 3D printers, sewing machines and more for students
to create work for school or personal projects.
Hill is undergoing construction that will be finished in 2020 that will feature an academic
success center with tutoring for our students.
Here on the Brickyard, we host several special events each year including Shack-A-Thon, which
is a campus-wide fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity.
Fraternities and sororities, clubs and organizations, and colleges around campus will build shacks
out of pretty much any building material you can think of and will have someone from that
organization in their shack 24/5, Monday through Friday of that week.
At the end of the week, all of the building materials and all of the funds raised, gets
donated back to the Raleigh chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
Hillsborough Street is our home away from home, with lots of restaurants, coffee shops,
and even a Target.
My personal favorite event each school year is Packapalooza, a day-long street fair that
we host on Hillsborough Street, ending in a concert that will kick off the academic
year.
While there are lots of things for students to do off campus, there are many ways for
students to get around on campus including using our Wolfline bus system, renting Lime
scooters or Lime bikes, but our campus is very walkable.
Now we are in the Court of North Carolina.
You will see students sitting out, having a picnic, throwing a frisbee, and studying
in between classes.
All of the buildings surrounding us are home to humanities and social sciences courses
with each student taking a first-year English class in Winston, Tompkins, or Caldwell.
At the corner of the Court of North Carolina, we have our belltower.
Built during World War I to honor the faculty, staff, and students who died in service, but
now we use it as a celebratory tool and will light it up red whenever we beat Duke or Chapel
Hill in basketball, whenever we get a grant here on campus or when celebrating a new Howling
Cow ice cream flavor.
While we have a large, public campus, there are lots of safety measures in place including
our blue light systems, where students can go to a blue light, press the button, and
be connected to our University Police.
We just passed a Port City Java coffee shop where students will get a coffee and study
with friends on campus.
Otherwise, we are surrounded by many different academic buildings, home to mostly mathematics
courses.
Behind me we have SAS Hall which is where I took my freshman year calculus course.
NC State has an average class size of 35 students, but as you work further into your major, classes
do start to thin out from the large introductory lectures that you’ll have.
Behind me we have Reynolds Coliseum, and while men's basketball and football play off campus,
Reynolds is still home to women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, gymnastics and wrestling.
Not only a venue for sports, Reynolds has hosted many speakers and performers that have
come to campus over the years including notable figures like Martin Luther King Jr., the Rolling
Stones, and many more.