The "Room"
Today was bed loft return day, well, at least for the company which I rented my bed loft from. I actually broke down my loft yesterday so I didn’t have to deal with it this morning (I’m hardly ever functional in the mornings…). Before I took it down though I took a few pictures of my room to give you an idea of how I set it all up.
I have lived in Swinford Hall, which is part of the Johnson Complex, all year, and as such my room is “Z-shaped,” well, at least that’s how the school describes it… It’s more like a “Z” that has been stretched out until it forms two right-angles. While I am not particularly fond of this design, I know many of my fellow residents who are. The only real benefit I see is that you get a bit more privacy in your own little “wing” of the “Z.” Other than that though, everything else about these rooms is a drawback as far as I’m concerned. For starters, the room as a whole is a lot smaller than many of the other square rooms on campus. And second of all, it takes quite a bit of planning and experimenting to situate the furniture in your room. Not everything fits where you want it to, but it is possible to find a comfortable arrangement after a few tries.
I spent the first half of the year with my bed lofted for absolutely no reason. Originally I had intended on getting a futon to put underneath it, but I never really found an affordable one that I liked, so it wound up just being dead space. Coming back from Christmas break though, I decided to do some rearranging. It’s common practice in these dorms to put your bed in your closet to open up more space, so I decided to give this a try, even if my bed was lofted. I lost a few inches off the end of my bed to the shelf in my closet, but I’m not an overly tall person to begin with so it didn’t matter. I was also then able to put my desk under my bed, actually making use of the “loft” aspect of my bed and open up my half of the room almost entirely. I liked this arrangement a lot better and my room actually became somewhere I could “hang out,” rather than just sleep in.
In any case, not to scare all of you, not everyone winds up in this dorm complex, obviously. While it is, for the most part, a freshman dorm, it’s also the honors housing, so unless you’re an honors student (or you’re rooming with an honors student) you most likely won’t wind up in these dorms. And even if you are, in many cases people prefer these rooms. I guess it’s just a matter of personal preference. I’ve at least learned to play around with the set-up a bit and have found that you can make almost any space comfortable with enough invested time.
So I guess this is just about the end then. Without my loft to give me the extra space my room is a complete mess. I’m trying to box up some of my belongings so I can put it in my car this weekend and get it out of the way, but it’s hard to do without many boxes at hand. At this point I basically just want to load up my car and go. I don’t enjoy living in a mess, and having to do so for another week is going to be unbearable. Especially unfortunate is that my only four finals are scheduled for Thursday and Friday of next week, so I have to stick around. I’ll be cleaning it all out soon enough though, mopping the floor, and checking out for the year. My father’s flying out to help me make the drive back, which is probably a good thing considering I doubt I could ever drive the seventeen hours straight all by myself. I’m sure I’ll be checking in with you all at least one more time before the end of the year though. In the meantime I’ll be cramming for finals in this pit…