FFA was a big part of my life before college. Every year in the spring I would show cattle at the Oklahoma Youth Expo at the Jim Norick Arena. This place is honestly very outdated. For as much is it gets used with livestock expos, high school basketball games, and other competitions you would think that it would be a little bit more in tune with today’s designs. The seats are all wooden and uncomfortable, the bathrooms are old, and the concessions are visible dated. It’s a nostalgic place, but it definitely needs to be brought up to date.

I have spent several sleepless nights and many days at this place. I’ve always been a fan of the exterior of the building, it’s very aesthetically pleasing. Each study-able floor inside has a complete different design and vibe. Walking in on the main floor is kind of a fast paced, quick study sesh feeling put forward by the surrounding wooden walls and trim. On the level below that it is much more modern looking and offers a place for long study sessions. The lowest floor belongs to graduate students, but after sneaking down there a few time to study it is a mixed design between the two floors above it, offering a very classy yet very studious vibe.

The union was the first building I visited on my tour of OU when I was in high school. When I first saw the bottom floor of it, I really was kind of disappointed. I thought as a college campus this place would be extremely high tech and new. After I’ve spent many hours eating, going to meetings, tutoring, and studying all throughout the building I came to appreciate it more. I heard from someone that the booth section building on the northwest side of the union is supposed to be modeled after a European pub. Not really sure if that’s correct but it’s neat to see different building styles come to the same place on campus.

Coming from small town Oklahoma, this was my first encounter with OU’s style of architecture. I came to my first college football game in this stadium in 2012, before the new southern part of the stadium was constructed. My dad scalped some tickets for $5 each just moments before the game. We didn’t know the stadium and actually ended up with seats that were second from the highest section in the stadium. They turned out to be pretty good seats actually, we saw the entire game just fine.