Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford
Residence Stop
The Expositor Place
The Expositor Place residence is one of the newest residence buildings for Wilfrid Laurier University in downtown Brantford. It is one of the five residence buildings at Wilfrid Laurier University's Brantford campus, the other four residence buildings are Grand River Hall, Wilk's House, Post House, and Lucy Macro Place. I personally live in this residence with so many other students and I share an apartment with my two other roommates. Because The Expositor Place is a super long name, we all usually shorten it to Expo. It is very homely, and it contains a lot of space where an apartment can contain about five people with two bathrooms. One of my friends lives on the third floor in apartment 308 so I went up from my apartment on the second floor to get her in time for our busy day. I do not think she was too excited to see me because it was so early in the morning, and she claims I woke her up from her lavish wedding with Drake.
Tim Hortons, Brantford
After I picked up my friend from her apartment, we realized we did not have the opportunity to make breakfast before heading out, so we decided to stop at our favorite coffee shop, Tim Hortons fast food right next to our residence building. My residence and Tim Hortons share the same building so the walk is not long at all, it is also much easier because they recognize Laurier students when we walk in, and they treat us pretty well.
Luckily for me, I had my Tim Hortons gift card in my bag pack, so I did not have to take money out of my pocket to pay for my order. I ordered a double-double medium sized coffee and a sesame seed bagel with butter and bacon inside, and my friend ordered a medium sized ice coffee with a ham and cheddar sandwich in a jalapeno bagel.
We waited approximately 5 minutes for our orders to be ready and when they finally came, we took them and started heading to our next stop.
The Odeon
The Odeon
We started heading toward the Odeon building which is about a five-minute walk away from the Tim Hortons we stopped at. We tapped our One Cards (student cards) to get into the building and we made our way up to the second floor and in the room 211. This classroom is called the OD211, and my class usually starts at 11:00am but I got there at 9:00am because I needed to study for a test that I was writing that day for another class. It was an in-person class, so I had to study really hard in a quiet place.
My friend and I took our seats and began to study. After we studied for about an hour, we began to create quizzes for ourselves to remember everything we studied. We began to ask questions about everything we read, and the other person has to answer them as accurately as possible, relating to what we studied for the past hour. Before we knew it, we realized that we had been quizzing each other for another hour when my lecturer and my course mates began to walk into the classroom. We put our books away and we began our lecture for 11:00am.
Eventually, our class ended at 12:50pm and we left our class to the next classroom where we were going to write our test.
The Research and Academic Centre
The Research and Academic Centre
We started to walk toward the Research and Academic Centre building which is about a three-minute walk away from the Odeon building, The Research and Academic Centre has the East side and the West side. We call the east side the RCE (Research and Academic Centre East) and the West side the RCW (Research and Academic Centre West). Right now, we were heading to the RCW where I had a test to write for my class, the classroom is called RCW002.
As we walked into the classroom, we saw a couple of people already seated in the classroom quietly waiting for the test to begin while the lecturer was at the front of the class making sure everyone was settled nicely without their phones or notes, ready to write the test. My friend and I picked our seats at the back of the class, and we anxiously waited for the test to start. Eventually, the teacher instructed us to turn our laptops on and he sent out an email to every student containing the instructions for the test that we all had to read and after those instructions were read by every student, he sent another email to the whole class containing the questions to the test and we began taking the test at 1:00pm.
As I wrote the test, I began to see the impact our study sessions had because I knew almost every answer that was in the test. As I was on my last question, I heard the lecturer announce that we had 15 minutes left to the end of the test, so I was glad that I was going to be able to finish the test in time. After this announcement was made, I began to see people leaving the hall so once I was done with the last question, I briefly went over everything I wrote and turned in my test then I went to the front of the class to confirm that the lecturer got the submission and once he confirmed it, I left.
I saw my friend waiting for me outside the classroom and once we exchanged our gladness on how the test went, we gave each other a huge fist bump and started to make our way out of the building and to the next place where we were going to celebrate the success of our test. Luckily for us, we were done with all our classes for that day.
The Laurier Bookstore
Stedman Bookstore
As we were making our way out of class, we realized that there was an event coming up that required us to wear Laurier swag, so we decided to stop at the Laurier bookstore to get some Laurier merchandise for this event. Luckily for us, the bookstore is in the same building as the RCW, so we just walked right into thre doors of the bookstore and started looking around for things that we liked.
The Laurier bookstore was not just a place where Laurier merch was sold but from its name, it also had a variety of books that were for leisure and education; it also included stationaries for students and faculty. As we were picking some of the things we needed, we also decided to pick up a mouthguard game that we could play when we got back to our residence building and we also picked up a book that was on display for Black History Month.
As Laurier students, we are lucky that we have our student cards, so whenever we need to get something from the bookstore, we could use our student cards to pay for items purchased rather than having to use our debit or credit cards so my friend and I took out our student cards and used them to pay for all the 5 items we purchased. We had a little conversation with the cashier at the bookstore who is also a student before we left and started walking towards where we were really going to have fun for the day.
As we continued our two-minute walk to the gaming lounge, we were discussing about how Laurier gives students opportunities to work on campus while still being in school just like the cashier at the bookstore that is a student but also given the opportunity to work on campus; she mentioned how convenient it was for her.
One Market Gaming Lounge
One Market
The One market Gaming Lounge is the newest addition to the Wilfrid Laurier University Brantford campus. It was fully made accessible to students in December 2021 and has been one of the students' best spots on campus since then. The gaming lounge is located on the first floor of the One Market building (a renovated mall) at the Laurier Brantford campus. This gaming lounge has the best games from a pool table to a Play Station 5. It has about 5 different games available for students to play in pairs and individually. Personally, it is my favorite spot on the Laurier Brantford campus because I love the fact that I have a place on campus that I can relax and have fun after a long day or a long week of schoolwork; most times I use it as a reward for my hard work.
The One Market also has other things in it like classrooms, study spaces, it is where the international students' office is and also the office for Accessible Learning. The One Market used to be a mall but it was bought by Wilfrid Laurier University and it became a campus building for students and faculty to access.
Gaming Lounge
My friend and I walked into the gaming lounge with all our stuff from the bookstore and we went straight to the Play Station 5 and put in the game CD for Basketball (NBA 2021). The game went on for about 50 minutes and we had a fifteen-minute halftime, fortunately for me I won the game with a lead of 12 points.
After my friend accepted her defeat, we noticed two guys came in and we decided to play some games with them. I played pool with one of them and my friend played air hockey with the other while another pair of friends were playing ping pong. Unfortunately, both my friend and I lost to both of the guys in the games that we played but we decided to accept defeat after we argued with them for 20 minutes about how they cheated.
We realized we had been in the gaming lounge for about two hours, and we realized we had enough fun within those 2 hours so we said goodbye to all the people that were there and we left feeling very happy and fulfilled. The next thing we were thinking about was how we were going to fill up our stomachs after a long day, so we spotted some eating spots on campus, but we came to the realization that we had a decision to make.
Eating Spots
Nine North and The Works
After we left the gaming lounge, we noticed that there were about 6 possible places on campus that we could get something to eat before we started to head back home but out of those 6 places, we narrowed it down to 4 places that had the best variety of food and the ones that tasted the best when we needed a full meal, but we still had to make a decision between those 4 places. The 4 places were In N Out, Nine North, Zaaika, and The Works.
Nine North and The Works are 2 different eating spots that are very close to each other but sell totally different things. Nine North is a Viet-Thai restaurant that is popularly known for their Thai and fried rice dishes, it is a Vietnamese restaurant, and their food is delicious; it is my personal favourite on the Laurier Brantford campus.
The Works is also a very nice restaurant, and it is popularly known for its delicious and large burgers. At The Works, they mainly sell burgers, beers and poutines and they are absolutely delicious. They have meals that are available for vegetarians as well so quite a number of people in Brantford visit The Works to have a nice meal for take home or dine-in.
In N Out and Zaaika
Adjacent to the Expositor Place residence are Zaaika and In N Out. In N Out is a 24 hour convenience store that runs throughout the seven days of the week. This store sells a lot of snacks and food items from Canada and other countries outside of Canada and it is known by the Laurier Brantford community as Laurier students' favorite convenience store to shop at. In N Out is popularly known for their very exotic snacks and food items, items that are not always easily accessible in Canada until you go to the country where it was produced and purchase it.
Zaaika is right next to In N Out and it is a very nice and popularly visited Indian restaurant at the Laurier Brantford campus. I personally have never been there to eat but I have been inside the building when I was trying to get an interview for one of my journalism classes. I like the fact that it is very cultural and also very modern at the same time, they serve delicious Indian food.
We eventually reduced it to two options which were Nine North and Zaaika and after a best two out of three rock-paper-scissors match, I was able to win and choose where we would get food from, and I chose Nine North. We both walked for another two minutes before we arrived at the Nine North restaurant and at Nine North, I ordered the Nine North special fried rice with a side of crab ragoons while my friend ordered the Nine north shrimp fried rice with a side of freshly wrapped chicken. We waited for about twenty minutes before we got our food but as soon as we got our take-away orders, we began to head back home.
When we got back to our residence building, we both sat at my apartment and openend a bottle of champagne to celebrate a day well spent while we also filled our stomachs with the food we got from the restaurant. After all the celebration ended, we realized we were extremely exhausted and needed to lay our heads and get some energy for the next day, so we said our goodbyes and called it a day.
Background Images and Credits
- The Expositor Place
- The Odeon
- The Research and Academic Centre
- The Laurier Stedman Bookstore
- One Market Gaming Lounge
- All photos by Serena Anagbe