Incoming freshmen begin
adjustments to dorm living
By Sarah Szczepanski
Assistant
Features Editor
Pete Browning, a freshman in the Schools of Engineering,
just moved into his room at Cary Quadrangle.
"It's tiny; it's a closet," he said.
Browning is just one of the freshman who is feeling
the crunch of small dorm rooms. He said his room at home is about the
same size, but it's just him and all his stuff.
Once he arrived on campus, he and his roommate,
Andrew Bean, also a freshman in the Schools of Engineering, had to work
hard to cram the lives of two people into a space originally designed
only to hold one.
"We've moved the desks three times," Browning said.
"We bought the loft, but it was made for a bigger room, so we had to
move it around, too."
But for an unlucky few, the adjustment to Cary's
rooms was just a little bit harder to make. Eric Bleicher, a freshman
in the Schools of Engineering, said when he arrived on campus, he found
that his room was two feet narrower than any other room on his floor.
"We even were given hard chairs, we don’t
get cushioned ones like the people across the hall," he said.
Bleicher lives in the old section of Cary Quadrangle;
not to be confused with the renovated dorms, which include air conditioning,
walk-in closets and an average room size that is 21 feet by 24 feet.
Jennifer Bate, a resident of Meredith Residence
Hall, where the average room size is 17 feet by 9 feet 8 inches, noticed
that some of the other residence hall rooms she saw were larger than
her own.
"I thought it was kind of small," said Bate, a
freshman in Undergraduate Studies. "But it's not a problem."
Bridget Rueas, a freshman in the School of Health
Sciences, is also trying to make the most of her new dorm room.
Rues moved into Meredith Residence Hall, from her
parent's home where her bedroom consists of an entire floor complete
with four windows.
A switch such as this requires some major adjustments.
She says in order to utilize the small floor space
available, she stacks plastic containers and folds more of her clothes
instead of hanging them.
But for many of the freshmen, they say the sometimes
claustrophobic rooms are worth dealing with when it means the students
can be independent, living in their own place.
"It's quite exciting, said Rich Kim, a freshman
in the School of Technology.
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