Anyone who knows me well knows that I have an obsession with desire paths. If you don’t know what that is (none of my friends here did until I told them), Merriam-Webster defines a desire path as “an unplanned route or path (such as one worn into a grassy surface by repeated foot traffic) that is used by pedestrians in preference to or in the absence of a designated alternative (such as a paved pathway).” If you want to dive deeper, here’s a great article by The Guardian. Anyways, as weird as it sounds, when I first arrived on campus, I was excited to stumble upon desire paths everywhere I went since college campuses are notorious for them. While I did encounter a few (usually where sidewalks needed to be wider to accommodate larger friend groups), I was pleasantly surprised to find that the University of Iowa’s Pentacrest has man-made desire paths! What I mean by this is that where it would be likely for a desire path to be formed, there are already paved walkways. It’s almost as if they were designed with the natural flow of human movement in mind. For this reason, I believe the Pentacrest is absolutely perfect!

Thanks for letting me geek out for a minute!

-Simran