Sidney Smith Hall

Not my favourite place to have class or study on campus. They have these tiny desks that you can barely fit a notebook on and that don’t fold properly half the time. In terms of studying, there’s spaces with big windows immediately off the entrance but the rooms are often loud or smell strongly of food.
There’s a Second Cup and washrooms in the lobby. But the lines are generally so long — especially in the ten minutes between classes. They’ll also often have booths from various student organizations set-​up here which is awkward because they feel like panhandlers.
The only event I like here is the Cram Jam when they give you free healthy snacks and puppy cuddles.

The only study area where it is acceptable to eat a pizza/​fries while studying, even though there’s a café downstairs. It’s more or less at the heart of UofT, so you’ll find a lot of students meeting up here for class or study groups.

Can we please talk about the Sidney Smith café?
It’s disgusting.
As a student who is heavily in debt, when I pay $ 8 for a meal at Spring Rolls, I don’t expect it to be gourmet cuisine, but I expect it to be edible. It’s not. I got the Pad Thai and the noodles were mushy, overcooked goop. lacked seasoning, and the thing generally is a disgusting mess that no amount of seasoning can save.
Another thing about it: I was a vegetarian for about a year. During that time I bought a bowl of soup from the café (potato-​chickpea-​carrot something or other), and found meat in it. SERIOUSLY GUYS. You get two kinds of soup, chicken noodle, and this chickpea stuff. And you can’t make one of the vegetarian? Or like, at least put up a sign or something? Disgusting.
The classrooms upstairs are nice, though 2117 is extremely hot in the summer. Overall I come here only when I really must — for lectures and tutorials and tests. Otherwise I stay the hell away.

Sid Smith is a building where students at UofT have their classes. This building has a cafeteria, study areas and many many rooms.
What the main problem about this building is that it has horrible ventilation and the structure is not beautiful at all. When I’m in class or a tutorial here I always find myself either too hot or too cold. Not to mention the noise you can hear inside the classroom. It is always difficult to find any room to sit in the reading areas and what annoys me the most is that there is no security!
When I’m studying and this is on multiple occasions– there are always hobos and beggars making rounds bothering me from my tasks. Why is there a non– UofT who is asking for money asking students who have to pay tuition and rent for money? I just don’t understand.
Anyways I love that there’s a Tim Hortons and Second Cup but other than that nothing else.
–CL

The lecture halls are pretty awesome on the 2^nd floor, and classes are alright.
Now the cafeteria. By god, the only thing one can eat there is the pizza.
Everything else is horribly overprice, doesn’t taste good, and. well. It’s horrible. The healthy food is super expensive. I can buy half a weeks worth of groceries for a healthy meal here.

I have an office here.
It makes me sad. I used to have my office at OISE and for the first year I held my office in SS I would still go back to my OISE office even though I was supposed to move out of it.
This terrible asbestos-​laden building is kind of the most terrible thing that ever happened to working at University of Toronto.
In all the new buildings and Hogwartz type building this one is the lacklustre old school building with big blocks that give it that terrible insitutional feel.
The food options here terrible but not the worst. Outside you’ll get the row of foodtrucks that are just junkfood but junk food is ok every now and then especially for nonpicky undergrads.
On the first floor there is a second cup and its stays open til pretty late– it will even be open on weekends. If you’re lucky the foyer also hosts a bunch of clubs that solicit for memberships and donations with baked goods. That will happen at least once a week.
And in the basement you have the cafeteria with Tim Hortons, Spring Rolls and Campus food– shawarma, pizza and chicken roasted– stuff and the usual beverages that go along with that. None of these really any good either. Not only is it corporate, but it’s overpriced and less than fresh.
The numbering on the rooms are confusing and students ALWAYS get lost.
The south side of the building are classrooms/​lecture halls and the north side of the building is the office tower and administrative offices.
I don’t go to my office very often.
For all the reasons above.

This building only gets 3 stars because the caf has so-​so food and I don’t have too many fond memories of this building lol… I wonder why after all these years no one has posted the building hours yet… Not too sure how accurate this information is seeing as sometimes they close a little earlier or later and the glass doors leading to the specific Departments close at different times too, usually even earlier, but here it is:
Monday to Thursday 7:00 am to 10:30 pm
Friday 7:00 am to 6:00 pm
Saturday 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Sunday 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm

I have had some classes at SS, and I still do. The lecture rooms are on small side but that’s good because I can see the board and hear the prof loud and clear. I had all kinds of random classes here so it’s difficult to judge which department this building belongs to.
The first floor has Second Cup and some tables where you can study. But it is too noisy there. Thankfully it has Scotiabank ATM at the entrance, which comes in handy.

Sidney Smith (SS) is sort of a melting point for all sorts of random sciences courses at UofT, it houses the main admin offices for the faculty of arts and sciences, along with the Arts and Science Students Union, hosts Anthro and Pysch labs in the basement and has classrooms for other sciences courses and seminars as well, and also includes a typical UofT food court, a lobby area that is popular when the football world cup rolls around, has a second cup and quiet study spaces.
With all that going on it does give me a sort of «swiss army knife» type of feel, but lacks the elegance of anything it does. I think it’s an ugly dull building that does little to even try to appease the student’s mind in to entering (a stark contrast to some of the older buildings on campus and the newer fancier looking buildings by Queens Park Subway).
I give it 2 stars of having a lot of things that one would require (a rare on campus ATM as well) to quite spaces, but it’s nothing special and it’s a building that I do not fancy myself to spend a lot of time inside.

Sidney Smith is nothing special as far as UofT buildings go.
The issue with this campuses buildings is that while some of them are historic and beautiful, built in the 1800s, some of them (cough, this one) were built in the age of concrete and weird shapes — and they have remained that way since.
Sid Smith is home to ASSU (Arts & Science Student Union), Psychology, Linguistics, Arts & Science, and much more. The building layout makes about zero sense — avoid the basement unless you really understand their colour-​coding walls.
They have a cafeteria in the basement which has spring rolls, pizza pizza, and the busiest Tim Horton’s on campus. They have seating there as well, and as it was just redone about 2 years ago (cafeteria only), it’s actually still quite nice. They also have a Second Cup just inside the main entrance.
So, while it’s not my favorite place on campus, it has enough lunch time seating that I find myself there regularly anyway — and it really isn’t SO bad!

This Uoft building houses many main offices for things such as the Department of Linguistics, Department of Psychology, Department of History and Department of Political Science. The building is layout is quite odd but you get use to it. Once you go through the main doors, you will see an open space with some chairs, tables which a lot of student groups use to advertise their club, and a second cup.
There are also two main study areas that are kind of on the opposite side of the building. On the side that faces St. George Street, there are smaller tables and it seems to be quieter there whereas the other side which faces New College and the AC has bigger tables but it’s generally noisier. This building also contains the Sid’s Underside Café where there’s a food court you can buy food to eat from places like Tim Hortons and Spring Rolls.
Lecture halls here are alright. nothing too fancy. They do look old though. And also, I don’t think it’s safe to drink the water from the fountains here. Once I filled my bottle and the water was actually cloudy! Overall, a nice place to chill in between classes =)