Gonzaga University - Spires Yearbook (Spokane, WA)

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THE OTHER MANS PE UT-BUTTER S DWICH S ALWAYS TASTIER it ' '--Q sw t :ef-an '--- R .. SNS? -.'- , - : nfs XV K In ' 1 ' A rf ,N si .aff we--W ' I Living in a dorm is like eating a peanut butter sandwich. lt takes a lot of crust, plenty of bread, and the beginning is always sticky. But if you swallow hard and stick with it, you can get used to it in a jiffy, even if you never really learn to love it. Think back to the days when, as a lowly, lonely, somewhat stupid frosh, you were first introduced to your dorm. It was scary, wasn't it? You didn't know a single soul and it probably seemed like every time you opened a different door, you were stampeded by a new and endless onrush of faces. Smiling faces, frowning faces. Faces that were all mouth and faces that didn't even seem to have mouths. Fat faces, skinny faces, relaxed faces, nervous faces, smart faces, dumb faces, but above all-strange faces. You were really on your guard, weren't you? Which faces were the ones to go out of your way to meet and which faces were the ones to avoid? You probably picked one person out of the crowd you knew you would never be able to stand. You didn't know ex- actly why fmaybe it was the way' the eyes nar- rowedj, but something told you it just wouldn't work. Minutes later, some bubbly R.A. undoubtedly dragged you bodily over to narrow eyes and intro- duced him as your roommate .............. Time pulled you closer to all those strange and terrifying faces, gave you the ounce of courage nec- 35

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essary, and suddenly you began to make friends. Soon, there were more familiar faces than strange faces and even the strange ones didn't scare you any more. It was probably around this time that you began to regard that big, ugly fixture you lived in as a sort of a home, rather than that big, ugly fixture you lived in. Dorms rarely turn you on during the first introduction. You're still pretty home-oriented and your eyes really can't help but roam, somewhat eerily, down the corridors, connecting the endless rows of numbered doors with the only thing you've come acorss like it before-prison. What you'd imagined would be a plush, comfortable, homey-atmosphered dormitory, came across as a way too tiny, drab, and all-around crummy prison. But after awhile, you would adjust again, and even though you'd have to admit that it was a crummy prison, it was your crummy prison. Back to the peanut butter sandwich. How many peanut butter sand wiches do you know that just happen? A wave of the old peanut but- ter knife, a stickily-muttered chant and poof ...... they're there? Not too many l'd wager. It requires tasting and testing, time, and a lot of change before a sandwich finally fits the bill. In the same way, dorm life can easily be brushed aside as time- consuming, cash-consuming and an all-around pain in the neck. But when you stop to think of it, almost anything you do these days is time-consuming, cash-consuming and an all-around pain in the neck, so the argument isn't too effective. lt's easy to cite bad points about anything. As always, good points take a little more thought and per- sonal honesty. Gonzaga's dorm life has evolved in much the same way as a person learns to choose his favorite spread. From the days of the wideopen, row-upon-row, living quarters of the fourth floor Ad. building, when cooperation was a must and privacy a dream-dorm life has ulti- mately altered to fit the step of the seventies. Parietal hours, a co- residential dorm on campus, and the discussion of a possible real co- ed dorm in forth-coming years, show that, while dorm living is still in an experimental state, it is everchanging to meet the needs and wants of a student. As the student grows older, he begins to look back on those early peanut butter sandwich adjustment days, with a nostalgic longing to go back in time. Stifling a sob and swallowing an ever-present lump in his throat, he talks jovially about the good time, underplays the bad times and relives the good old days. x ,X 2 Ei . A 2