Tanner McColl

Tanner McColl

I feel my memory map of Harvard University (stretching from the athletic facilities to the Quad) is actually fairly accurate as (for the record) I did almost this exact same assignment for a class I took first semester called Primitive Navigation. In that assignment, we first drew a memory map of Harvard’s campus and then walked to physically map it through a kind of combination of route and survey knowledge of the roads, buildings, and other landmarks. I feel I particularly captured the curve of the Charles River, the position of the River Houses along this curve, and the layout of the multitude of freshmen dorms and facilities within Harvard Yard. My memory map, however, falls apart perhaps in terms of scale and where the roads meet. I am quite used to the layout and order of the buildings of Harvard’s campus and the square, but I do not quite understand the curves and routes of the roads amongst these buildings. As such, the roads on my map are not quite correct, and many of them are too close together (especially Brattle and Church Street) leaving not enough room for the buildings that occupy the space between them. This, of course, may be due to the fact that I do not travel those roads much, similar to how I rarely travel to Radcliffe, Harvard Business School, the SEAS area, and Harvard Law School. These areas are mapped on my memory map, but I truly have no idea what buildings and what layout exists within the vague outlines of their borders. I think my map suggests that I am much more connected to the concrete facilities of Harvard University rather than the shops and surrounding businesses that do change throughout time. I also know much more about the individual routes that I take to the buildings that I frequent for class with other routes less traveled containing less information or more inaccurate building outlines and route curves due to the nature of my movement throughout Harvard’s campus.