Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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I came to Northeastern from California and getting to know a lot of people quickly by being in a dormitory eased the burden of being far from home and a close family. I was forced to become more extro- verted to get to know people and I spent a lot of time going places with a small mob that had gathered together. As a sophomore, though, I found that most of my freshman friends had flunked out, quit, transferred, got married or gone into apart- ments. Only a few of the once large circle remained. I began to spend my time outside the dorm. I stayed partially due to the convenient location. More important, for lack of an alternative. Not only where else could I live, but with whom? I have this habit of losing roommates and friends to marriage. Since I live in Boston year-round, I would have to find someone else that did too. or roommates in each division. They would have to be people 1 would be confident to be comfortable living with for a long period of time. I remained in the dorm. Roommates were a joy and a nightmare. I ' ve been a bridesmaid and the first one to know about three engage- ments. I ' ve also had to demand that my underwear not be borrowed, hint at the virtues of bathing, and been slandered to dorm councilors. The rules, which regulated us like infants freshman year, have become almost non-existant. Even ways of enforcing common courtesy - en- ding the constant noise - is disappearing. I found the food often fattening, sometimes unedible. I ' ve found hair in the ragout and tomato bugs in the salads. When I got to my upperclass years, though, the rule that co-op students could cook for themselves helped a lot - when someone didn ' t steal my dinner. One of the most serious problems in the dorm has been the drug question. It has stopped me from a number of possible apartment ven- tures. Most of my friends smoke marijuana. I do not. I have not wan- ted to risk getting busted due to a roommate, unlikely as that may be. People smoke in the dorm but don ' t get busted, and wouldn ' t en- danger you even if they did. Most dorm councilors fall into two categories - those that smoke themselves and so wouldn ' t bust anyone. and those who wouldn ' t recognize a joint if you handed it to them. Precautions against getting caught run from wedging a wet towel un- der a door to spraying the room with deodorant, hair spray or cologne. Consequently, a straight dorm dweller doesn ' t run the risk a grass-smoking apartment-mate brings. Freshman and senior years in the dorm the black-white problem wasn ' t very evident. But in between, things were kind of tense. During that time a lot of blacks became black-power oriented and it seemed they thought it was beneath them to associate with whites. They demanded (and received) a lot of special privileges that some of the whites resented. A lot of them became loud and rowdy. By senior year though, it seems the mixing has resumed. I think a lot of the blacks have put their militancy into perspective and no w aren ' t so afraid to be themselves. By senior year I ' ve come to wish I had an apartment. I ' ve become more intolerant of the freshman - they seem so childish. The dorm has become less my world and more just a place to go back to at night. Dorming has combined a few convenience for me during my life at Northeastern that living elsewhere would not. The proximity to school, relative cheapness, freedom from roaches and rodents. The dorm student also has an advantage of never being alone. Living with four hundred people, someone is always available to talk to or go somewhere with. But at the same time, there are always places to go to be alone. I ' ve learned a great deal about myself by being placed in an almost independent situation, surrounded by people whose lives and back- grounds, so different from my own, I would have never e xperienced unless I lived with them. I hope I can take the lessons I ' ve learned and use them in teaching little kids, since I ' m an elementary education major. Things about differing cultures, environments and attitudes they can benefit from. Just like Northeastern, the education from the dorm comes not from the buildings, but from the people in- side.