Happy Sunday! I spent this week alternating between rehearsal, procrastination, writing part of the script for a musical, more procrastination, and even a little homework at times. (Okay, I totally got my homework done, I promise. There just may or may not have been one or two... close calls.) I even managed to dig out enough time to go to Alpha Delt's black light party, watch several episodes of Buffy (so addictive—my GPA will regret this, I suspect), and to bake Irish soda bread today (truly, truly delicious. Be envious). The issue is that I have a short story due this Friday, and I'm having difficulty with, well, words. That ought to make this week interesting.
Also, there was sunlight this weekend! Here's hoping that this is the start of a general warming trend. It was nice to have a proper New England winter, especially considering last year's winter failure, but I'm definitely ready for the spring. Sunshine! Warmth! Shorts! Leaving my heavy coat in the closet! Flowers! Greenery! Seeing lots of shirtless people chilling on Foss Hill! The attractions are endless, I tell you.
Of course, the problem with the approach of spring is that it means I have to start worrying about the future, an activity I abhor. Getting summer jobs worked out, looking at classes for next semester (oh, Permission Of Instructor classes; I love you, I just hate applying for you), and thinking about housing.
Yeah, housing.
So this is the first year I've ever had to worry about GRS (it stands for General Room Selection, which I only found out just now when I googled it... Oh, acronyms), and I'm just glad that I have friends who are on top of their game, because I kind of hung on their coat tails as they figured things out. This is the first year I'll be doing GRS; freshman have a different process, of course, and for sophomore year I went through program housing, which was a whole different story involving applications and decisions. So far, this year has mostly involved trying to figure out who to room with, and then trying to figure out who else to room with when one of my friends decided to stay in program housing rather than GRS.
A piece of advice I was given last year regarding housing: It's never too early to start dividing up your friend groups! It sounds horribly callous, doesn't it? But, well. I've witnessed enough housing dramas by this point that I actually have to agree. Not being able to live with someone isn't a bad thing; I personally have a few friends with whom I am absolutely not allowed to spend too much time, or I run the risk of killing them. These things happen.
- "
- Clark Hall! [thank you, ResLife photo
This is Clark Hall, where I lived in my first year; I was in Writing Hall, which is all the way at the top — Clark 4, or C4 for short. (Get it? Get it?!)
I actually really liked living in a dorm, despite the distressing lack of a kitchen — well, there was a kitchen, but it was tiny and cramped and I didn't have any kitchen supplies and the few times my friends and I tried to cook in there, we first had to do a deep clean of the fridge so that the distressing smell would go away. (Seriously, kids. Don't leave meat or milk in the fridge for months. Or if you do, at least get a fridge of your own so that the only room you're contaminating is your own.) And yes the walls are thing, and sometimes there are people in the hall — or in your room — whom you don't particularly get along with.
On the other hand, there's something really great about being able to just wander down the hall and find your friends, or see someone's door open and wander in to see how they're doing. Everyone in the art classes found it really useful when they needed hand models and could just ask the people sitting out in the lounge. (Oh man, the lounge; C4 had these two couches that we liked to push together, so that they created a giant sofa-entity which we named Ernest.) Sometimes there are people whose company you like, but the two of you don't really have the sort of relationship where you go out of your way to have lunch — living in a dorm makes it a lot easier to hang out.
(This is all just my opinion, of course, and my experience from Clark. I cannot vouch for anyone else's experiences in dorm living!)
Plus, Writing Hall in general was fantastic. Anecdote: during freshman year, most of the hall was in the lounge. The room right next to the lounge had a white board on which something (I can't remember what) had been written. Some genius had later come along and anagrammed that. Noticing this, about ten people subsequently came up and wrote their own anagrams, which ended up with a huge number of people clustered around the door. A few kids from one of the other floors came up, saw us and asked, "Hey, is there a party in that room or something?" We responded, "Uh, no, we're anagramming." To which they stared blankly before saying to each other, as if it was an explanation in and of itself, "Writing Hall." The Disney singalong was another cherished memory.
Another bonus of living in Clark: it's right by the center of campus. Seriously, don't underestimate how fantastic that is.
- 202 Wash!
- ...and in the snow.
And this is 202 Wash(ington Street), the esteemed location of both Writing House (where I live) and Full House (where I almost lived).
(Okay, funny story: as I write this, my mom is on the phone with me asking me about my housing plans for next year. Oh, lovely coincidences.)
Unlike Clark, 202 Wash has a grand, glorious, mostly-fully-stocked kitchen. (There is no zester, as I discovered the other week when I was baking a Dutch pancake, but into every life some rain must fall.) This is really, really important.
Of course, we also have a food thief/thieves, which is distressing. Milk, cereal, bread... anything easily edible is liable to disappear. Once my lasagna got stolen out of the freezer, which was especially tragic since I had been really, really looking forward to that lasagna.
Besides the food thief, though, I'm really pleased by Writing House. It's like a dorm but smaller, and with a far lower likelihood of discovering vomit on the front stoop. The people are really nice, there are often cookies in the kitchen, and I managed to snag one of the rooms with walls that aren't paper-thin, to my everlasting happiness. Being in Writing House also means that I learn about some writing-related programs which I would otherwise not know about/have access to. It's at the edge of campus, but that's not nearly as difficult to deal with as I would have worried.
So I'm a little concerned about going into GRS. What if it's not as good as the last two years have been, housing-wise? What if I get a really bad number and have to take a horrible room? What if I never see any of these people whom I live with and whose company I enjoy, but have never made friend-dates with?
Luckily, I've got a bit of time to worry about some of these. That's what summer vacation is for, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment