When most people first come to college they have a plethora of worries. Am I going to enjoy my classes? Am I going to make friends? The list goes on and on. One of the biggest worries for me was where I was going to live. Now I am a very sociable person, but I also heavily enjoy my space and private relaxation time. The thought of being cramped into some tiny dorm room, like I had seen at many other schools, was not very appealing to me.
Although I had toured RIT’s residence halls before I decided to come here, as most people will tell you, it’s hard to get a picture of what the room will be like with all of your stuff in it on these tours, not to mention the prospect of a roommate's stuff also. Luckily for me the process of choosing a roommate had been made easy because my roommate had already requested me through the myhousing system by the time I got there to look for one myself, so all I had to do was check out his Facebook profile (which both of us had provided), and I was set.
As most people do, for the first few weeks we had the room set up in the manner that housing operations had given it to us in, however by the time that we left we had changed up the floor plan more times than you could count. Although many people dislike dorm furniture, calling it ‘boring’ and ‘utilitarian’, we found it to have the wonderful ability to act almost like Lego blocks, allowing for so many different arrangements. Often I would find that most people would keep their bed lofted for the space that would give them, then face their desks together towards the window which gives a nice common space in the middle of the room to entertain company.
Speaking of entertaining company, that is something we did very often. I felt that life in my dorm was much like one giant slumber party. There was always someone to have fun with, always someone there to help you, always someone to make you laugh, always someone to cause a little mischief with. We very early on realized how social of a floor we were and so adopted an open door policy whenever we could. We would actively wander in and out of each others rooms, hanging out, chatting, playing video games, ordering food, having movie marathons. By the end of my time in the residence halls I felt we had become much like one big family and it was hard to say goodbye, but even to this day whenever I see any of them around school I give them a big hug and we stop to catch up.
