It is not uncommon in the first week of classes to overhear students asking for directions to a classroom or a building on campus. However, the students searching never ask if there is a map they can use—most lost students are unaware that it is available to them.

The Delta State University website makes the map available to everyone who visits the site. Students only have to scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click “Maps & Directions.” Students can also find this helpful tool by using the search bar on the site and typing in “campus map.”

Whatever way visitors of the site find the map, after it is found it can then be printed or saved to a device so that it can be easily accessed in the future.

Yet, some students are left floundering on the first week of school because they don’t know about it. There are no notices or emails or posters saying how students can find this much needed tool. Students instead have to rely on luck or kind peers to navigate their way to classrooms.

Many of the students who possess maps of campus get them from orientation, but not all students are able to go to orientation when they begin their academic journey at DSU. This could be because they registered late or because they transferred in the middle of the academic year.

The students who do have maps in their possession realize how invaluable they are.

One student that wished to remain anonymous said, “I didn’t really use it until I was trying to find my classes and I got a schedule, but I would have wandered around aimlessly until I found where I needed to go if I didn’t have it.”

Senior Jonathan Harwood said, “It helped a lot for the first week of school, knowing where to go and where I can park. I would have been so much worse off without it.”

The students realize the advantage they have been given and usually don’t keep it all to themselves.

Senior Kathrine Wells said, “At least once a semester I pull out my map to help another student figure out where they need to go. I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have it until I saw so many others students looking lost my first week here.”

Many students without maps say that their main problem is that they didn’t know how to get, or who to ask for, one. When asked how they found classes, most of them said that they asked other students whom they ran into that “didn’t look as lost” as them.

Teachers also help students find their way by telling them where to go or pulling up the map on the DSU website and letting them know that they can find it, too.

Dr. Coker-Durso from the English Department said that she has more heard first year students talking about not knowing where anything is than any of the upper years. She said a possible remedy to this could be requiring students take a class such as orientation.

Even for students transferring from other colleges where they have already taken an orientation class, being required to take orientation for DSU (or a class like it) would help students to better learn about the university and how to get around campus.

While the absence of readily available maps allows students a chance to show kindness to their peers, students without maps shouldn’t have to rely on luck and the goodwill of others to get through their first week of university.

Making sure students know how to find their way around campus would help students get through the start of their semesters, making an already stressing time less stressful.