Ah, yes, the time has finally come to fill out new housing contracts for next year. This is the first year that sophomores are required to live in dorms, so they built brand new ones to make more space just so the soon-to-be-sophomores can fill them all up, right? No longer a freshman, you know that the University owes it to you to put you in the dorm that you want, with the people that you love, and the suite set up that you absolutely must have. And so it begins, the process of getting second-year dorm housing at The Ohio State University.
Step 1: Ignore all of your Friday night plans in order stay up and slave over your computer. When the clock turns to 12:00am on Saturday February 13, 2016, you must immediately open the housing portal and begin filling out the contract.
Step 2: You realize that the housing contract has about 21 pages and you just want to ask OSU one question: WHY??
Step 3: The housing portal system starts to glitch and shut down. Maybe it's because 10,000 other students are trying to fill out their contracts at the same time. All your work on the contract is lost.
Step 4: After trying to re-log in and redo the housing contract, the system won't stop shutting down. It's past 1am and you decided to give up and try again in the morning.
Step 5: The next morning, you wake up refreshed and ready to tackle the beast. Finally, after an hour and numerous texts sent in your "future roomies" group chat, the housing contract is submitted. Success!
Step 6: Patiently wait until March 22nd, 2016, when you get an email with your assigned housing.
Step 7: Open up the email and experience immediate devastation. You did not get any of the 5 dorms that you requested. You wanted a 6 person suite, but instead you got a 2 person room. Some people even got put on the opposite side of campus than they requested. You are placed in a old dorm right next to the giant brand new one that is still being built. You will walk past this every day and be reminded that OSU probably did not even look at your housing contract for a second.
Step 8: Change your group chat name from "future roomies" to "the once hoped roomies".
Step 9: Realize that it doesn't matter where you end up living because you have the privilege of being at Ohio State every day. There's no place like home.
