Moving into my freshman dorm room was, without a doubt, the most stressful experience of my life. I was moving in to a 10 foot by 20 foot jail cell, and half of that wasn't even going to be my space. The other half was going to belong to a stranger that I had been texting and snapchatting (awkwardly) for three weeks before we finally met on move-in day. Just thinking about it is enough to induce a panic-attack.
Between frantically shopping and packing all summer, panicking that I had forgotten stuff, and then finally getting to my room and seeing how small (and hot) it was in there, I was a wreck.
Despite all of the worry that occurred before move-in day, I find myself often wishing that I was back in my cluttered room on the eighth floor, sharing a bathroom with 25 other girls that I didn't really know, and eating cereal out of paper bowls with plastic spoons.
My freshman dorm room was so much more than just a room. It was my home for 30 weeks.
After my roommate and I got over our awkward stages, our tiny freshman dorm room really began to feel like home. We covered our walls in pictures of our "home friends," and then quizzed each other on the names of our home friends for the weeks to come.
It was so narrow that we could pass snacks to each other from our own beds, and didn't even have to get out of bed to get food from the fridge. Privacy quickly became a foreign concept for us, but when you're as close with your roommate as I was am, that doesn't matter much.
As my freshman year went on, my dorm room witnessed some of my best and worst times. It witnessed a countless number of sob-filled phone calls home, so much frustration, and enough snacking to last a lifetime.
It witnessed me freak out over outfit choices before a night out, and then welcomed me home with cold water bottles at 2:00 in the morning.
My freshman dorm room saw me through the awkward stages of first meeting and hanging out with my roommate, it saw us spend countless hours singing, dancing, talking about anything and everything, and watching SVU together, and then it saw us cry as we took our decorations off of its walls and packed all of our belongings to move out.
Living in my freshman dorm room with my randomly assigned roommate was one of the best experiences of my life, and I only hope that any freshmen in a dorm now can see that already.
