Final Blog Post!

My first two weeks of college were, what I thought, the worst two of my life. I arrived on campus two weeks prior to the start of classes for soccer pre-season. This meant waking up every morning at 5AM, getting to the field by 5:30, and then warming up for a full day of soccer before the sun was even up. I did not know a single person going into this routine. My roommate quit 3 days into pre-season which made waking up even harder, but I did not mind having the room to myself. Well, somehow I made it through pre-season (I was sure this was not possible) and was excited to start the year with my own room. About a week into school I decided I would push the beds together and make a king size bed for my one person-room. Moments after I made this decision a girl comes in with suitcases and duffle bags. She plops her stuff down on one of the beds, looks around, and tells me I will need to buy a different T.V., and a new microwave as well. She then hangs a curtain up in the middle of the room and explains to me that her boyfriend visits every weekend, and that I will need to be elsewhere during those times.
I had heard bad roommate stories in the past, but never thought that I would encounter such things firsthand. My second year of college I lived in a mostly sophomore dorm, with a roommate that I had known since high school, and my living experience was drastically different than that of my first year. These experiences are what lead me to think about the differences in all college students’ housing situations.
Here at UNC-CH there are numerous residential housing options on campus. Most students choose to live on campus their first year. Living on campus is very convenient, and some students remain on campus their second year. Morrison is a mostly sophomore dorm and also where I lived my sophomore year. I thought it would be interesting to examine the activity levels of freshman versus sophomore dorms. I did not get to experience many of the aspects of living in a freshman dorm because I was gone most weekends for soccer and/or kicked out by my roommate, so I was also interested in the typical activities of freshman dorms. I hypothesized that freshman dorms would have more scheduled activities designed to introduce people to each other than sophomore dorms. I used Hinton-James as my freshman dorm and Morrison as my sophomore dorm.
An analysis of my observations did not lead to substantial proof and/or support of my hypothesis but was definitely a good step in that direction. The pancake dinners held in Hinton-James is a great example of a freshman dorm activity designed to bring people together. My findings as well as other similar findings could help the housing department at UNC-CH. They could design policies which do not only aim to make dorms a safe and comfortable location, but an environment where students can benefit from the huge amount of potential social interactions available in a place where they are living with hundreds of their peers. I know that if I had not played a sport my freshman year, I would have wanted to participate in any activities held by my dorm as I did not know anyone entering the University and did not have the best connection with my randomly placed roommate.