Gettin' Me Some Learnin'

Today was the day folks that I buckled down and got to studying.  Turns out, if I am going to enroll in nursing school next year (I should hear back in the next few weeks) I will need to take the placement exam for Anatomy and Physiology I and II, as well as for Microbiology.  With the weather being cold and not wanting to overly caffeinated myself, I decided to head over to the Cathedral of Learning.

The Cathedral of Learning is one of the tallest educational buildings in the world, the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, coming in at 42 stories.  The building is made of steel (shocker) and covered with limestone.  

The Commons Room is an amazing 15th century English perpendicular Gothic-style hall which is four stories tall and covers nearly a half acre.  This section contains true arches which support their own weight, as opposed to the rest of the building which is held by steel.  Apparently the fireplaces still work and are lit during finals to give the room a cozy feeling.  Too bad I came a few weeks too late! 

I did get off to a good start, but soon it seemed like hundreds of high school aged children were walking around.  It turns out they were there for a forensics competition.  I was a speech and debate geek back in the day; it was hard to believe that my teammates and I were once that age.  CRAZY.  With the racket going on I decided to pack things up and go poke around the rest of the building.

While walking around I also decided to poke my head into some of the Nationality Rooms (there are 27 in total).  Each of the rooms depicts a different ethnic group that helped to build the city of Pittsburgh; Ruth Crawford Mitchell thought it would be a way of involving the community in the construction of the Cathedral of Learning.  The money to build each had to be raised by each ethnic group, but the maintenance would be paid by the University.  The first four rooms were dedicated in 1938 (Scottish, Russian, German and Swedish), with the newest rooms including the Indian room (2000) and the Welsh Room (2008). 

Twenty five of the rooms hold daily classes and the other two can be explored through a guided tour.  Different traditional and religious holidays are celebrate and appropriately decorated throughout the year. 

Czech Room

Scottish Room

Italian Room