Okay, I must admit, I might have been the most skeptical person to living on the south of campus in school housing. As a freshman, I had not met one person who was more worried than I was about how awful it would be to live in a south campus apartment at Syracuse—heaven forbid my lottery number for housing was bad and I would have to live there.

This nerve-racking feeling happened to get worse when I learned that with the luck of the draw, I would be living in south campus housing.

I wouldn't let myself believe it. Like, I truly would not let myself believe for a second that I would have to live in the south campus apartments at Syracuse University. My fears of living so far from campus and from my friends who live on the main campus only got worse, until I luckily flew to Japan and was distracted for nineteen days to anything that was going on back in the states.

Upon return, just in time to move back into college, I made myself accept the fact that I would be living on south campus. I embraced the fact that I would be rooming with one of my good friends, and living close to a few of my other friends, and tried to neglect my fears of living on South.

Moving in was, well…interesting. After eight hours of driving my car to campus, I found myself inside Parking Services to purchase three parking passes, and leaving with two. I guess those who live on south campus are not allowed to park on main campus, which is just astounding, right!?

Basically, this past week has been a great learning experience of trying to make it to each class on time when my classes are back-and-forth between main campus and the design studio. Also, when I have to go back-and-forth between taking my car to classes every single day. BUT—it hasn't been too bad.

This weekend was exhausting, I must say, but it is when I learned I actually might enjoy living away from campus. After being settled for a couple of days, I quickly learned that having a shower only used by my roommate and I is really THAT much better. We also have not had a single fire alarm wake us up, are not living in a literal shoebox of a dorm room, and have so much personal space.

My roommate and I have been able to go off on cute excursions like plant shopping, the farmer's markets, and FINALLY being able to do our own groceries without relying on a meal plan or GrubHub. After a lot of work, I must say our apartment is looking extremely cute with our simplistic, modern theme of black and white and the accents of our new plants.

A couple nights ago I began to fall asleep extremely happy with living away from campus. There is so much space in our two-story apartment, and my roommate and I are able to study and relax without hearing screaming drunks outside until 4 a.m. I must say, it has been life-changing.

All-in-all, please do not fear to live away from campus if that is what you have to do. I told myself so many times that I would never allow myself to live on south campus, but with my awful scenario with the housing lottery, I ended up having to. And with that, I am so happy I had such "terrible" luck with the lottery number, as this has truly been a blessing in disguise.