Everyone's freshmen year of college is a special one and sets the foundation of the rest of your college experience. Your parents drive up to the front of the building, put the jammed-packed car in park, and begin unloading your life onto the sidewalk. You carry up a dozen loads of items, start organizing, start feeling anxious that it is finally happening; you are really about to be living here for the next nine and a half months. It is the first location you meet new friends. The first place you sleep while living on this new campus. The first new "home" you create away from your own house. It is the first place for many, many different occurrences. For me, it was the location where I made countless memories for which I am ever grateful to that dormitory hall.

Thank you, Longden Hall, for giving my roommate Carl and me the best room we could have ever asked for. We will forever miss the 335. Your closets helped our clothes addictions tremendously. Your high ceilings gave us the illusion that our room was much larger than it was. Dearest 335, thank you for being on the highest floor, and sincere apologies to whoever roomed below us and heard our every noise and hundreds of dance outbreaks. 335, thank you for being our salvation from outside chaos and the creator of our choice of chaos.

Thank you, Longden, for having the Den beneath you. Having a dining hall three floors down came in clutch numerous days and especially nights. You were a perfect excuse to have other friends walk to my dorm instead of me trekking to theirs. Thank you; I am beyond thankful for the underground tunnel to BR. Having that access to my besties in that dorm made many nights getting ready much warmer in the snowy months.

Thank you Longden for placing such amazing people in the same building -- from all my girlfriends down the hall to the rowdiest fellas just around the corner. Especially the cutie on the floor below me. Thank you for being the place we met and continued to run into each other. Thank you for being the place we talked for hours getting to know each other better every day. Thank you for being the location of "titling" our relationship. Thank you Longden for introducing me to my favorite guy.

Thank you Longden for being home to where I did a large chunk of growing up last year. Thank you for keeping your doors locked as the Poodles laughed, cried, talked, danced, and a slew of other activities. Thank you for being a co-ed dorm, so I could be with many of my best friends of both genders. The long days and nights were all vastly different from one another -- some filled to the brim with studious acts, and others crawling through the hours searching for our next adventure to happen.

Thank you for making the hours filled with studies tolerable because of the conversations in the lobby. Longden lobby holds a special honor in this thank-you letter. That lobby was the place we would do cartwheels in between studying. It was the place we would eat our takeout. It was the place we would stand to avoid the cold while looking out the windows waiting for the Safe Ride bus to pull up. It was the place 30-some girls with shaking knees in pretty dresses gathered to walk to discover their Greek chapter fate. It was the place where we studied in pairs and groups. It was where we would joke, sitting for hours in the middle of the night after having to rise from bed because of a pulled fire alarm. It was the place to get caught up chitchatting for an hour when running to the print room. It was really nothing to see, but it was our place.

Longden Hall, though many folks hold a certain type of negative feeling towards their first-year living unit, I will forever be beyond fond of you and grateful to you for being the center where infinite memories occurred. It was on your steps and inside of your walls that many strangers became those dearest to my heart. #blessed