Where am I going??? North Cobb’s strange hallways confuse and bewilder [map]

Morgan White
Students and teachers will preach how North Cobb serves as a perfect analogy of Atlanta’s roadway infrastructure. Built over multiple years with a limited structural idea in mind, the school’s layout serves as a stressor for young freshman, and a headache for even second semester seniors.

Morgan White
Unsurprisingly, students may not be aware of the multiple other pathways, many of them cutting minutes off travel time. Sometimes, seemingly longer routes pay off in the long run. AP World teacher Ms. Galloway’s classroom sits near the infamous Malfunction Junction. “Students realize that Malfunction Junction is a place where the traffic jams pretty heavily, so usually students who are coming a good distance away for my class will go through the courtyard or come in through the 600 hall,” she said. “But if it’s raining, they may not do that, and then they’ll have to go through Malfunction Junction, which makes the traffic there a lot worse.”

Morgan White
Situated nowhere near the 600 hall or the nonexistent 400 hall, the 500 hall escapes student’s mental maps, even though students certainly have stepped into the hall, for either the bookroom or ISS.  “The 500 hall is difficult for students to remember as it isn’t commonly used. The 600 and 700 hallways are also very hard to navigate. I get lost everytime I get back there, and I draw all the maps for the subs and students,” Admin II Clerk Mrs. Woolsey said.

Morgan White
Perhaps the most confusing architectural decision in the school (not including the 300 hall transforming into the 600 hall halfway through): a secret, barely-used staircase completely out of the way of most student’s routes. “It’s a pain to navigate this school because we’re an old school with new buildings and not enough land. We’re all trying to squeeze into this small plot of property. We can’t expand anywhere but up, which is why the freshman academy is two stories and the Deal building is two stories, because we have nowhere to go. We’re such a big school and since we kept having to expand, things might seem a little disorganized,” Mrs. Epps, Magnet Support Clerk, explains.

Morgan White
Unless students take Construction, finding the classroom proves a challenge. Construction teacher, Kevin Squiers, elaborates on the confusion: “People don’t know where this class is or get lost on their way pretty often, especially with parents and counselors. Students do sometimes know where it is, but I think people get lost because it’s separated from the rest of the school. They expect it to be connected and it’s not, so people don’t know where to go unless they ask.”

Confusion about the school’s complicated map proves widespread across the campus, including parents. Since the 500 hall sits directly adjacent to the 200 hall, getting lost is understandable. Even senior Maitreyi Bandlamundi finds the school layout confusing: “It’s very difficult to navigate this school because there are so many buildings and so many intricate hallways that it’s hard to find your way, especially if you don’t have classes in that area. Like I didn’t even know about the 600 hallway until last year.”