My Room

Baker Hall - my home for nine months out of the year. Four narrow walls, one dresser, one bed, one desk - definitely made for one person and I call it "home"?! I have all the essentials here: the tv, the stereo, my tapes, and of course food. That's all a person really needs.

Some people rent U-Hauls to move in. I stuffed my mother's car. How people can get everything moved into these rooms I don't know. I've crammed my clothes - in the closet, in the dresser, and more sweaters in my crates. I wonder what the desk is for. A desk with one drawer in it. I keep the phone there. After I managed to find a place for everything, I found that the one thing this room does not have is a bookshelf. Imagine that - a college dormitory without a bookshelf. So I keep my books in a chair next to my bed. Whenever my friends come over they just sit on the cold hard floor. Does that seem like a nice way to treat friends?

My bed is all right, if you stay in the middle of it. If you sit too close to the bottom edge it humps up like a baseball mound. The mattress is a little shrunk for the size of the bed, and sometimes the mattress will slide a little too far one way. That's okay as long as it slides the right way. The bedposts have that rusty look. Every year people graffiticize on them with stuff like "Kev + Cam" or "Kev loves Cam" so that the person who sleeps there next will know who was there before.

The window is an absolute essential. Some people prefer it over the modern-day telephone (that is, if the call is local). For example, "Hey, Mitch! Are you coming? Bring the beer!" I have the only window in the hall that is held open by a Psych 100 text book, and a view over looking the roof of Baker Hall. People throw beer bottles and . . .other things there. At night someone fires what sounds like a gun, and sometimes I think the bullet might come right through my window. Some nights someone will turn their "rap music up loud enough so that I can stay awake and enjoy it with them. Then if the window is shut it gets very stuffy; if it gets too stuffy in this room a cloud may form. I don't think that I should take that chance, so I leave the window up.

Being a girl, I can say that I miss those warm soft bubbly baths from home. My alternative - a nice hot shared shower with a rusty faucet. There's brown stuff growing on the soap dish. I'm not really sure what that is, but it's been there since the day I moved in. The crushed bug is gone, though. I make it a habit to always look the shower over before I get in to make sure that I'm not sharing it with anything. You never know.

A lot of cardboard must have been saved when this room was built, however the walls are as tough as stone. It sounds like the boys upstairs are on the golf team and they've been practicing their golf swings. Lucky for me I brought a hammer to remind them who lives downstairs, but when I tried to pound it against the wall, the wall fought back! It made a tick-tac noise and some of the fresh paint crumbled off the wall, but that's okay because I found another picture to put over that spot.

What more could I ask for? It's a room of luxury for any college student. The dorm room is perfect for the person who loves small tight places and little sleep.