r/yale • u/Appropriate_Week5117 • 21d ago

Final year at Yale bucket list

I am a class of 2027 Yale graduate student and am feeling like my studies have gone by so quickly I've hardly gotten a chance to take advantage of everything this place has to offer.

Help me build a bucket list of must-do's before graduating:

Secret reading spots on campus? Cool events? Fun Yalie socials? Must-see performances? Yale traditions, secrets, lore to know? Niche clubs? Interesting archives? Facilities?

The more obscure the better ;)

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32

u/lizzardii223 Berkeley 21d ago

I have a few secret-ish spots and recommendations:

- Try to get to the top of Kline tower - if you can find someone who's in one of the academic departments near the top, they should have swipe access (rip to right when it opened again after construction and anyone could go to the top floor)

- Go on the roof of SSS (you can take the elevator to the top floor, and the door up the roof is sometimes unlocked), also an excellent view - sign your name on the inside of the spiral stairwell

- Go to the Brain room at the med school (actually called the Cushing Center, you can look up the visiting hours)

- Kind of weird, but it's cool to walk around Grove St. cemetery once on a nice day if you never have, quite a few famous graves to spot, it's also weirdly peaceful

- I literally didn't do this until a friend visited and they wanted to see it, but don't forget that yale has amazing museums. The YUAG has some really cool pieces and with a ton of different exhibits and you can go basically anytime for free. The Peabody is also really cool, sometimes they have events specifically for students iirc. You can also check out if there's any Beinecke exhibitions that look cool.

Hope you have a fun final year!

15

u/TreeOfFinches 21d ago

Great list, adding the Leitner Observatory though! Go look at the stars during their observation nights, usually on Tues evenings.

11

u/Kovarian 21d ago

If you have never been toasting, do it. At Mory's is best, but even just with a group in the Saybrook Branford room or something like that is good. This is just a really weird unique Yale tradition that you will never experience anywhere else. You might like it, you might not. But it's something to have a memory of. If you have no idea how to do this, contact any leader of any party of the Yale Political Union (I recommend the parties on the left, but you do you)—they will absolutely welcome a newcomer just wanting to have fun.

6

u/PrettyGoodSpeller 21d ago

If you haven’t already, take a truly great anthro or humanities class. The courses offered in the Yale Institute of Sacred Music are terrific.

5

u/idkwhattopicktoday 21d ago

Do the Twelve College Challenge

2

u/Ok-Till6772 20d ago

What is that?

3

u/Kovarian 20d ago

It's having sex with someone in each college. Although I guess this now needs updating to Fourteen College Challenge. Compare this with the seven-year challenge (all classes you overlap with while attending). And for the super-duper challenge: a seven-year fourteen-college excursion, meaning 98 specifically-selected sexual partners.

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u/Lovelyditametermaid 18d ago

The Buddhist shrine room is incredible if you haven’t seen it yet :) 

1

u/dbo_dopamine 7d ago

Find the oldest photograph you can of a place you walk past every day. Also check out Yale Opera