Everyone’s experienced it, and those seasoned veterans among us who have learned the ways of campus know to avoid it: Library Walk. The place where swarms of clubs, causes, organizations, and Greek life assault even the most frazzled, stressed out looking student trying to avoid a long trek and take a shortcut through the campus center. It’s extremely difficult to venture through this area without having your arms stuffed with fliers, which inevitably end up in the recycling bin five minutes later anyway.

Add to that the unavoidable guilty heart you’ll leave with after seeing the pictures of starving children and hearing about mass blood shortages across the country, and you’ve got a scary combination. With all these things in mind, we here at the How-To Guru information center have written you a handy-dandy guide to surviving everyone’s favorite part of campus.

Step One: Make eye contact with everyone trying to educate you about something or the other. Doing so will give them a glimmer of hope that maybe you actually care and will listen to their spiel for a solid three minutes of your life. Once they’ve begun to approach you with a naive, over-excited smile on their face, feel guilty and forget that you’re late for that one discussion section where the TA always takes attendance right at the very beginning and stop to hear them out.

Step Two: Now that you’re woefully entrapped in the clutches of an overly enthusiastic freshman volunteer, you have to successfully extricate yourself from the situation as awkwardly and rudely as possible. The best way to do this is to pretend to see a friend, wave wildly at the aforementioned imaginary human being and rush off with a quick “I have a midterm/paper due/friend emergency/dying pet/it’s the zombie apocalypse, sorry I can’t donate!”

Step Three: At this point, you’ve gotten through one awkward encounter, and your next hurdle is to navigate through the gauntlet of people passing out fliers for everything from MCAT classes to cat adoptions to drunken “cultural” parties. Make sure to leave enough room in your backpack for the pile of papers that you will be collecting for events that you’re likely never going to think about or attend. This will allow you to immediately reach your weekly recycling quota. While you’re frantically stuffing your backpack to free up your hands for your grossly over-brewed cup of Perks coffee, crumple your homework for that one class where the professor actually takes points off for neatness and aesthetics.

Now that you’ve safely made it out of Library Walk alive, it’s time to reflect upon this journey.We know your lives are full of minor inconveniences, stresses, and obligations, but Library Walk is the perfect place for all of them to come together and haunt you for the duration of your UCSD career. Follow our guide word by word and you’ll be just fine!