Graham Center FIU

This place is convenient. That’s really what it is — it’s convenient for books, it’s convenient for food and coffee and event has a «convenience store» that includes things like redbull and pencils and pens for right before your final when you’re freaking out. However overall the food isn’t that great, and it’s very crowded most of the time. The weekend hours also suck — for the most part everything is closed, which makes pretty much no sense considering the fact that FIU has the largest undergraduate campus in the country. Why should they have to suffer through the cafeteria food every weekend (which is also not so good).
The highlights:
1. Bustello has great cuban coffee. They don’t care about the nonsense of weekends that everyone else seems to be doing are pretty much always open whenever I need a caffecito.
2. You don’t have to go off campus to eat or obtain supplies, which is convenient if you for some reason don’t have a car on campus, or it’s raining buckets.
3. There’s plenty of seating, which is nice when you’re eating all the mediocre food.

I’m in-​between on my thoughts of the Graham Center at FIU. Every time I walk down the hall from the entrance towards the Green Library I feel as if I am time traveling. I wonder if they ever considered putting moving walkways like they have in the airport it is such a long galley. I find the selection of shops in the back an odd selection —
Need to look your best before going to the library? Well then stop right in to the salon, or get your nails done– why not drop off one of your cashmere sweaters to the dry cleaner. I guess it works, since these shops have been there for a while, but they just seem out of place to me. When I lived on Campus, I was at Biscayne Bay, so I was in the middle of NMB. You had to drive out of the campus to find any of these stores– even when I lived on campus at Florida State, no such shops were right there– just seems a bit impractical. But again, obviously there is a supply and demand since they are still up and running. There are also strange kiosks that pop up every once in a while since you might need a bracelet before going home. You never know.
There have been some improvements from the time I started at FIU in 1999 (I’m a doctoral student now) — They went from having only two food selections to adding some top name fast food spots such as Einstein’s and Subway. There is added seating in the area closer towards Green Library. There aren’t a lot of outlets in the seating areas so if you need a plug you might be better off going to the library.
My biggest issue with Graham center is the elevator. It is slow and not consistently within working order– which is pretty bad considering that means that handicapped students then are not able to attend class. This almost happened to me once when I was in a knee brace– I hopped up the flight of steps — and was extremely tired and in pain by the time I got to class. You would think that this would be top priority. IDEA anyone???

my cousin held his baby shower here and i must say that it was very nice. plenty of room. parking close by. congrats guys!