The chal­lenge of going to the bath­room here was one that has been on my mind for quite some time. The allure of the small corner of campus that the engi­neer­ing triplex consist­ing of Roberts, Miller and More Halls had been tempt­ing me for quite some time. I attribute this to my regrets of, in no partic­u­lar order of impact on my conscience: not apply­ing to any depart­ment in the engi­neer­ing college what­so­ev­er, even though my admis­sion was prac­ti­cally guar­an­teed; not listen­ing to my over­bear­ing Asian mother and follow­ing an engi­neer­ing/medical career path like most of my fellow hapa peoples with an equally over­bear­ing Asian parent told them to do so; real­iz­ing too late that an engi­neer would be more qual­i­fied in prac­ti­cally every way possi­ble in my desired career path; notic­ing way too late that more than a third of all the intern­ships in the entire world are engi­neer­ing intern­ships; and so forth.

Perhaps I should have known better than to explore a good poop­ing site with a heavy conscience. It is not in the best inter­est of the student who walks the campus walk­ways of Seat­tle in search of suit­able restrooms, as it does not allow one to be filled with the spirit of the search, the quest to find “the one.” Of course there are certain times to reflect upon your past but the middle of an adven­ture regard­less of its magni­tude is absolutely no time to do so.

Disap­point­ment will be abound in explo­rations such as these, and Roberts Hall was of no excep­tion. Although, it could be said that it fell on the other side of the spec­trum of disap­point­ments, as it was so disap­point­ing that it was just as invig­o­rat­ing as discov­er­ing a great bath­room. The main entrance to Roberts, located on the second floor, contained no restrooms what­so­ev­er. A quick trek up to the third floor on one of the side stair­cases ended up being a dead end as the door to the third floor was locked. I back­tracked and took the main stair­well up to the third floor again. This set of stairs had pictures of miners work­ing under­ground, which begs the asking of the ques­tion, “What did these guys do when they had to go to the bathroom?”

The third floor was just depart­ment offices and reminded me of my dentist in terms of decor. A peek into the men’s room was all I need­ed. Unfur­nished, concrete walls, a mere two urinals and one stall, and very dim light­ing. Some other guy was poop­ing in my desired stall. I was disgusted with the outfit­ting of this partic­u­lar bath­room so much that I hiked down the two flights of stairs to the first floor and pooped in its simi­larly unfur­nished but dissimi­larly empty men’s room.

Ponder­ing my personal acad­emic woes did not make the Roberts review­ing expe­ri­ence any more enjoy­able. I needed to get out of here quick­ly, but how so? I tried the exit sign near the men’s room, hoping it would lead me out to the below-ground court­yard of Miller Hall, but ended up luck­less again as I took a right and after trip­ping on an uneven side­walk slab real­ized this was not connect­ing to my exit. I had to enter the ground floor of More, find the stairs to get me to the first floor, back­track and walk out its side exit about 50 feet away from my orig­i­nal entrance into Roberts.

All in all, this expe­ri­ence was extremely disap­point­ing for many reasons, span­ning from “hav­ing to walk up six flights of stairs” to “exis­ten­tial crisis.” They keep these build­ings in a weird corner of campus for a reason: to discour­age any poor souls from using the bath­room here. Avoid at all costs.