Last summer when my housing notice finally came I excitedly tore it open. I quickly scanned the page to find out where I would be living: Cohen. I had never heard of that dorm so I took out my trusty Dartmouth map and I looked for it, and I looked and looked and looked and then, when I finally found it, I realized my mistake. I had been looking on campus when everyone knows that the Choates are practically in West Leb. Well I did finally find them and all hopes for good housing weren't dashed immediately. It was still possible they could be nice dorms, have big rooms, their own bathrooms, fireplaces ... well, that was a fantasy.
The weekend after I received my room assignment I went to a dinner for accepted students. There were a number of upperclassmen students and we began talking about housing and where we were all going to live next year. We began by going around the table and having everyone name their dorm. The first student said "Mid Mass," the second "North Fayer," and the third "Russell Sage." Each one of these got a corresponding nod of approval and an exclamation of either "nice dorm" or "everyone I know loves it there" from the upperclassmen . Finally they came to me. "So where are you going to live?" they asked.
"Cohen," I said nonchalantly.
"Ooooh, I'm sorry".
"Huh? What? Why? Really?" I started to panic.
"Umm no. I hear there's a lot of dorm bonding," said one of the upperclassmen as she deftly tried to recover from her blunder.
I should have realized something was wrong then. In the world of dorm rooms that phrase is equivalent to "well he/she's got a great personality!"
Well with less than two weeks left of school I think I can safely say I survived the Choates. I put up with all the Chetto and Hamster tunnel jokes, poor ventilation the three days it was warm and a heating system that was set to a comfortable 45 degrees. What got me through the long winter, battling the elements was the belief that "next year will be better, it can't get worse." Well, I was wrong. Last week I once again excitedly tore open my dorm notification with visions of Mass row and Hitchcock dancing before my eyes. I unfolded the piece of paper and there as I stared in disbelief was the word "French." I was in the River, I had been wrong, it could get worse and it did.
I didn't get it. Did ORL hate me? As I dejectedly made my way across the green I ran into some friends of mine from South Mass excitedly waving their notifications around.
"Guess what? Guess what? Almost everyone from South Mass is living in New Hamp or Hitchcock," they said.
"How is that possible?" I asked numbly.
"I dunno," they said
"I had a better number than you ," I said.
"I dunno" they said.
"And you're in South Mass now. I don't get it."
"I dunno. Lucky I guess," they said as they ran off smiling.
"Yeah, real lucky," I said.
At this point I was not happy but I still wasn't suspicious. Bitterly I made my way back to the Choates where I found many other sad and miserable looking people. First I asked my roommate where she was living: "River." Then I asked the boy down the hall: "wait listed." Then a friend from upstairs: "River." And finally the girls next door who had used one of the best numbers in our class: "River."
I was no longer suspicious, I was sure. I had just stumbled upon the great ORL conspiracy. I figured it out, the numbers they gave us were just a cover up, everything had been decided before we even set foot on campus. Obviously there were two lists "The Privileged" and "The Damned" and I was most certainly on the latter. It had been decided that I was destined to be screwed over for the next four years.
What had I and the rest of my cluster done in a past life that could have so enraged the ORL gods? Why were they determined to seek vengeance upon us? I tried to think of possible reasons. Maybe I should have sent them Christmas cards or money or promised them my first born child but excluding those I could think of no realistic explanations.
Instead, I have resigned myself to my fate, to four years of bad housing, to long treks in the freezing winter, to rooms the size of a closet and to looks of pity from my "privileged" friends . All I ask is when you see me hiking through the cold and snow back to my dorm, don't laugh, the "damned" have feelings too.
