Life in Hardy Hall is great. However, within the walls of the oldest dorm on campus lies plenty of problems. Don't get me wrong, I love this dorm. I've lived here for the two and a half years I've been on campus and I plan to live here again next year. For some, the problems outweigh the benefits. Here's a list of pros and cons to Hardy Hall life...
Con: It's always hot. Hardy Hall is known for its heat. We have no air conditioning in the summer and have no control over the heat in winter. It's like Maintenance has decided that we have to spend all that money for the electricity bill somehow. If you like living in a sauna, this is the place for you. 
Pro: You bond over the heat. There's nothing like suffering through the heat to make people bond. When something disastrous happens, we come together to help out. Like a fan breaking, or freak thunderstorms happening during class. At the beginning of the year, there was a freak thunderstorm and everyone had their windows open, because, you know, it's stupid hot. It rained inside and many girls' room got soaked, including books, homework, notes, laptops, you name it. Imagine this: five girls running around to the 20 rooms on the floor collecting said thoroughly soaked items. Ten girls in the hallway surrounded by these items using hairdryers on the more vitally important ones. An RA buying a five pound bag of rice from Walmart. After everything was collected, those of us who were running around started taking towels to floors and desks so there weren't any puddles in the rooms. Then, we took towels to the stuff that wasn't being dried with hairdryers.
Con: The laundry room. Hardy Hall is one of the two dorms that only has one laundry room. Guess where it's at: The basement. It's great if you live on basement. It's right there! Here's the thing: There's four washers and four dryers for the entire building. That's about 100 women trying to use the same washers and dryers all the time. Not to mention, if you don't live on basement, you have to travel down a flight of stairs or three with your laundry. People tend to put their stuff in the washers/dryers and forget about it, too, so you're stuck there waiting for someone to open up the washers so you can do yours. To top it all off, at the beginning of the year, there was the Hardy Hall Soap Monster. Someone was using everyone else's detergent/softener and it got really annoying. It got to the point where someone put a note on the laundry room door for the Hardy Hall Soap Monster. 
Pro: We're all in this together. Again, the laundry room is in the basement and there's about 100 women using it, plus the RD who is married and now has a baby. We've got a system that (usually) helps for when the laundry is done. We're all just trying to find a time when it works to do our laundry. Unfortunately, sometimes we find our laundry laid out on top of a washer, but sometimes people will step up and fold it for you.
Con: Itty bitty kitchen. It's tiny. I'm not going to lie. There's barely any counter space, and the fridge is small. Plus, we only have one kitchen for the building with smaller kitchenette things on every floor. Other dorms have a full kitchen on every floor.
Pro: Dining room. It's about the same size as the kitchen, but it's painted a nice shade of green. It's got a table and some chairs where you can hang out if you want. Sometimes, you just want to hang out with a friend while cooking something, and what better place but the dinning room that's literally right next to the kitchen.
Con: The fire alarm. People have a bad habit of leaving their pop corn unattended and it burns, or they forget to put water in their easy mac, thus setting off the fire alarm. Not to mention the demon possessed microwave that burns your popcorn and easy mac way earlier than it should. There have been many cases of having to leave Hardy in the middle of the night because of this. There was a time my freshman year, during finals, that someone set off the fire alarm at midnight. There were a lot of groggy faces in pajamas on the sidewalk in front of Hardy. 
Pro: We're not the only dorm dealing with it. No, Hardy isn't the only dorm dealing with this particular issue, so really it's not much of a con. That's just a part of Dorm Life. 
Con: Noise level. There's a reason Hardy girls have a reputation for being very loud and outgoing. We tend to be. We get loud and don't care. The walls are thin, so pretty much you know when someone has a particularly loud fangirl moment, or when there's a stink bug. They're creepy and you can't squish them unless you want your whole room to smell. 
Pro: Never gets boring. I've literally had a conversation through a wall before. One of the girls in the room next to me didn't want to write a paper, so we talked about what it was about through the wall. Her desk just happened to be on the other side of the wall from my bed.
Con: Unmovable furniture. Most rooms in Hardy have unmovable furniture. There's a few rooms on first, one on second, one on third, and all the rooms on basement have movable furniture, but that's it. because of this, you can't have any variety in how the furniture is laid out in the various rooms in the building.
Pro: Unmovable furniture. You don't have to move the furniture around to have your room set up the way you want it. It's already locked in place, so no worries.
Hardy isn't for everyone, but it's my home and I love it dearly. It's like, the problems make it more charming. Kind of like an old house has a different kind of charm to it. There are so many things I haven't even mentioned, and you only really truly understand what life here is like unless you live here. The community is great, but for some, the cons are too much.
