This June, I will be walking the graduation stage at UC Santa Cruz, and my feelings are unsurprisingly bittersweet for a soon-to-be grad. In the past couple of weeks, I've talked about a number of issues the university has straddled its students with, such as closing student spaces and misusing funds in regards to class sizes. With all of this in mind, I wanted to take a moment to look back at one of the things my school has done very right, in some respects, at least: student housing.
UC Santa Cruz has a unique, 10-residential college system, in which students choose housing based on college themes, which they will take a formative writing class on, and locations. Once affiliated with a college, you live in their residential housing for your first year on campus and remain affiliated until graduation when you walk alongside your fellow college students in college-specific ceremonies. This system was created in order to provide smaller communities for students to interact with peers within the far larger university context, and for the most part, this endeavor is wholly successful.
I am affiliated with Stevenson College, and despite the very tight quarters – I lived in what's called a "small triple" with two other people, along with three desks, dressers and beds in an, at most, 20 foot by 20 foot room – I had an amazing first year living on campus. The way Stevenson is set up is between eight houses of about 80 students each, split between two quads of four houses each. In this way, Stevenson students get not only their larger Stevenson community, but also their quad community, and their even smaller house community. This provided us the opportunity to have very quick and fast friends, it was easy to stay close with and has created bonds with many of my fellow Stevenson students as well as with them amongst each other.
This setup is highly successful in its aim. Let me put it this way: I am currently living with one of my freshman year roommates, Brenna,
my freshman year next door neighbor, Riley,
and upstairs neighbor, Maya.
And last year, we lived with two of our freshmen neighbors from down the hall, too!
In fact, almost all of my friends from the dorms live with some variation of their friends from freshmen year, usually also from their specific house. For this, I am forever thankful and wanted to take a moment for a trip down memory (or nostalgia) lane as I gear up for the end of my college experience.
So, I'll end it with this: a photo from the first time I went out with Brenna and Riley a couple days after moving in
and a photo of me, Maya, Riley and Brenna this past weekend as we celebrated my 21st birthday
Thank you all for the memories, and thank you Stevenson for putting all these amazing people in my life!
