You probably walk past it every day on your way to State Street, or gaze down Bascom Hill at it thinking "wow, that is one UGLY building." And if you're lucky enough to have a class there, you know that most of the inside is just as ugly, if not uglier. But a select few spots hold enough beauty to salvage this big cement mess that is the George L. Mosse Humanities building.

Here are the three best places in this awful, awful building, some obvious, some not so much.

The central courtyard

The times of the year that it isn't closed, this space is more or less OK to hang out in. There's a scraggly tree and an interesting sculpture and lots of quiet. The lowest level of inside seating is always packed, so why not go outside and enjoy the little time that the courtyard is open for business?

The 7th-floor gallery

So this isn't really a study space like the aforementioned courtyard, but it is beautiful. The spring semester always yields such wonderful MFA shows and they change sometimes weekly. I usually use the gallery as a shortcut across the annoyingly long building, but when there are shows up, I always stop and linger.

The 6th-floor garden

So maaaaaaaaybe it's not a "real garden," per say, but it's garden enough for the Humanities building. It's a wonder it's stayed alive this long in such a stiflingly dull building. It dwells on the Park Street side of the building and is the sunniest, warmest spot in the building, and that's saying something seeing as there are multiple torches right upstairs. On any given day, with any given weather (yeah, we see you Wisco weather), this spot will warm you to your core and remind you that there is beauty within ugly.

I know that analogy is kind of a stretch, and I don't expect anyone that reads this to suddenly spend as much time as I (or any other humanities major) spend in this dreadful slab of concrete, but if you have some time to kill, head on up to the top floors and see for yourself the beauty that I've found in this building.