The 2021-2022 school year marked the end of an iconic OPRF tradition: the impossibly confusing room number system. Rather than being pelted by pennies on their first day of high school, as legend has it, OPRF freshmen found themselves in a much more difficult situation.
I was unfortunate enough to be a freshman at OPRF before 2021, and I remember feeling so powerless against it all; following signs that pointed me to rooms that weren’t there and watching in disbelief as a hallway just over skipped the room number that was on my schedule. At least I knew to never, ever ask upperclassmen for directions.
This experience, and so many others like it, lives in generations of OPRF memories. I thought no section about the school’s history would be complete without mention of its old room numbering system. As I began writing this article, I was determined to find an explanation behind how they possibly came up with the old system. I was going to find the answers that had been tormenting me since I began my time as a Huskie.
After poring through the OPRF history museum’s archives, however, I realized there was not much to be found. The system most likely came to be in 1967, after the building’s largest renovation to date. Since 1907, the school has seen more than a dozen large renovation projects, so all hopes of having an easy-to-navigate building died long ago.
Somehow, however, the new numbering system does seem to actually make some sense. OPRF sophomore Madeline Walski told me about her experience over text.
“I honestly like the numbering system,” she said. “When I first started at OPRF all I really knew about the numbering system was that the system had changed. I wasn’t and still am not exactly sure when the numbering system was changed, but this way works well.”
Does she even go to OPRF?
Growing up in Oak Park, I heard tales of the high school’s winding halls that were absolutely impossible to navigate. I could never imagine a version of myself who would carry herself confidently through that terrifying beige building. But time flies by; all of a sudden it was the spring of my sophomore year, and I advised my younger friends on how to make their way through the school.
Returning to school after the pandemic, my classmates and I entered an OPRF that we did not recognize. Senior year in 2021 was weird, and the new room numbers didn’t help.
But my peers and I knew the old OPRF. The person sitting next to you in physics might have had different taste in music or opinions on Kanye West or plans for after high school, but we all understood the hopelessness of the OPRF freshmen on that first day navigating the paperclip.
My OPRF was so different from the OPRF I looked forward to when I was in elementary school. Now I’m older and that version of OPRF is just in my memory. Things I thought were given went away, and I got so much more than I could ever imagine. I never actually did get to point the confused freshman in the wrong direction, and that’s okay.