San Jacinto Dormitory: home of the squirrels, Texas football team, Cypress Bend Cafe and all of the lucky freshmen who turned in their housing preferences early enough to get their first choice of dorm. It may not be in West Campus, but with game days and the interesting residents, San Jac brings about a wildness of its own that's bound to stay with you, even when you've moved out of your shoe-box room. Here's how you know:
1. You still cringe whenever anyone calls it "San Jacinto."
Stop trying to make San Jacinto happen. It's never going to happen. It's just San Jac. Okay, Gretchen?
2. You know the entire Cypress Bend menu by heart.
The quesadillas were always your go-to. If only they didn't charge extra for sour cream or guac.
3. You were used to the question: "Oh, you live in San Jac? What sport do you play?"
And if you're not an athlete, you probably lied and said you were before.
4. You knew your next door neighbors' favorite songs since you've heard them played 20 times today.
You probably have some pretty good gossip about everything you heard your neighbors say (or do) through those paper thin walls.
5. You've gotten into an argument over which tower is better, North or South.
Who cares if the TV room is in the South Tower? North Tower will always be better.
6. You still envy the people who had a stadium view.
You could only see the drunks stumbling in after hours from my window.
7. The people who took the elevator from Cypress to the first floor were your worst enemies.
The staircase is literally two feet away. How can you be that lazy? Now we're going to stop at every floor, and I have an assignment due in 20 minutes.
8. You have yet to find an elevator that compares to the first floor musical elevator.
I mean, c'mon. It plays the fight song and "The Eyes of Texas." It doesn't get better than that.
9. You probably still laugh about the time you tried to sneak someone in the Cypress Bend entrance after midnight.
And the RA sitting downstairs caught you immediately.
10. You swear that the guy at the front desk still hates you, since you always had to swipe your ID in front of him after late nights.
I swear I was just at the PCL studying. Quit giving me that judgmental look.
11. You credit your killer calves to all the times you had to walk up the 21st Street hill.
Especially when you were running late to your 8 a.m. class. That was just painful.
12. You appreciate the close proximity of your washer and dryer, since you always had to haul your three weeks worth of laundry across the dorm.
You always feared dropping a pair of dirty underwear on your way to the laundry room.
13. You lack trust in printers, since the one in the San Jac lobby always seemed to break at the most inconvenient times.
Please, professor. I promise I did it. The printer just wasn't working.
14. You feel awkward when you see your old RA on campus because of all of those wing meetings you promised him you'd go to, but never did.
And don't forget about all of the "get to know your neighbors" hangouts where you just stole one (or five) piece of pizza and then snuck out.
15. Whenever you go to the football games, you remember how crazy it was to take a step outside of your dorm to find thousands of random people in burnt orange.
You could just forget about eating at Cypress Bend on those days.
16. You can recall dozens of times where you awkwardly had to wait for someone to come open the door by the elevators because you forgot your ID.
You promised everyone that you actually lived there and weren't just trying to sneak into someone's room.
17. You still bet that if you walked into San Jac, no matter the hour, there would always be someone in the lobby doing homework.
You were never alone if you pulled an all-nighter.
18. You feel like you know celebrities since you always spotted well-known athletes walking around the dorm.
You probably took hundreds of creeper pictures on Snapchat of them.
19. You don't miss having to move your car to a different garage across campus on game day.
You were the one paying hundreds to park there. Everybody else should have had to park somewhere else and just walk a little bit farther to get to the stadium.
20. You will always believe that it is by far the best dorm on campus.
Because who really wants to live in Jester anyway? We had private bathrooms.