The Midway is the best thing about campus

From the inevitable three-minutes-until-class run to the exciting walk to grab the first fourth meal of the year with friends, the walk between 59th and 60th is undeniably a beautiful place to be.

Forget about the bone-chilling wind tunnel nor the black ice that forms during the winter where the sidewalk and street meet.

It’s so beaut.

In the fall, with the leaves changing and the wind blowing your hair in every direction, the Midway invites you to enjoy nature as you walk to Harper in the morning.

You totally forget school has even started. Obviously fourth week isn’t a thing because an earth this pretty can’t host a life so terrible.

The leaves, falling to the ground like yellow rain, fly past you as you walk back from the Reg in the afternoon.

In fact it’s so beautiful that it might just make you forget that you’ve been inside a library all day…

In the winter, the walk across the Midway is one you try not to take. And during Kuvia, you can’t even look up to see how far you have come. Instead, you hope you have crossed it already. If you live in South, you regret it every morning and night.

If you don’t, you either really, really love Cathey or you are a great friend. Regardless, the quiet helps you clear your mind from the freezing world around you.

The ice rink brings back memories and excited to make new ones. The nighttime snowball fights make the cold much more bearable.

And come springtime, it is exciting to see people outside again. Picnics and soccer games on the fields are a reality, things you’ve been waiting for since October. Sometimes you wonder if it is warm enough to do all of that. At this point, anything above about 20 degrees is outside weather.

The walk across the Midway becomes time to enjoy being outside – sometimes it takes you to study dates in the Quad or walks through the trees.

The walk down Ellis is the more social route. Friends walking to and from class, smiles all around. Rarely do you walk down the Midway either way without seeing someone you know, stopping to have a conversation or rushing passed but being wished luck with a smile.

This walk gets you through your midterms… aka it gets you through weeks three to nine.

The walk through the grass on university, skirting past the christmas trees riddled with snow, is the more scenic route. Grass trees surrounding you, the view is often quiet and thought-provoking.

A secret route to the west of the Quad or the shortcut to South, the ice rink makes you wish you weren’t rushing to and from class.

If only you had free time to spend.

As you click your heels on the way to Ida to sweat your way through another career fair, the Woodlawn route is stressful but exciting. Ida pops up out of the trees with her beautiful original UChicago-style architecture.

She is there for you as your heals and stress about the future weighs you down. It’s okay if you cry… she won’t judge.

The trek north could mean going to class or a library, a trip downtown or to the Point. The trip north is probably an escape method. Use this often.

The glorious sunset over the field, the boundless grass (or the idea of the grass growing back in the spring), the views up ahead, be they the ivy on Classics, the idea of cookies in Cathey, or the dreams of leaving campus, make the walk across the Midway a wonderful walk, trek, trip, or run.