Edited By: Kavya Gupta
There are a few things that make waking up harder on campus. One, the face of your roommate sleeping soundly, not expected to wake up for another hour. Second, the thought of those long distances from RH4 to AC02 and the mini jog near Kitkat only to still be late. And finally, the terrible, terrible, communal washrooms that I’m forced to put myself through at the start of my day. This is what I expected when rooms got allocated at the start of the academic year.
However, this year is different. I wake up to what seems to be an endless space between beds (four tiles). I skip over the thought of having to bring a carpet to cover up nonexistent blue-coloured tiles that hurt to look at. I never have to wonder whether there’s a urinal hidden behind the walls of the washroom . Both my roommate and I now have the luxury of carelessly leaving our stuff on the floor. Now, mornings are pretty easy because the way to moving around in the room doesn’t feel like a messy obstacle course (being messy pays off if you’ve got the space for it). As a proud resident of a room that does not feel like living inside a shoebox, I take my own sweet time going to class. There’s no rush, everything of importance is just a few steps away. Even the fuel zone bhaiya finally recognises that I’m a regular! I doubt there are better places on campus to come back to in the middle of the night.
When we meet for dinner, I don’t mind waiting for my friends who have to commute from one end of the campus to another (sorry for all my ‘new campus’ bros). I like to see the cycles parked randomly near academic blocks and communal spaces. I like that they’re not there for me. The slight setback to my daily step count, the one that reached never-before-seen heights last year, doesn’t even count in the face of the overall improvement of my mental wellbeing. I wouldn’t say the rooms in the new campus are bad. How bad can things be when you’re living close to all your friends on campus? It almost doesn’t matter that there’s barely any space for over four people. It’s not a big deal that the smell of cologne hasn’t left the room since you moved in, and it never will. And hey, the nightlights and headboards are nice, and the gym is so much closer. If the only living beings you see on weekends now are the dogs near the new mess, so what?
The room allotment has changed campus dynamics significantly, that much is true. The only silver lining in this massive transformation seems to be the fact that at least the allocation was fair to all. It makes complete sense to base the allotment on something as arbitrary and out of our control as our first initials — what a masterclass in randomness. When my roommate and I first got our allotment, it felt like a cosmic joke. Now, I’ve got a heart next to her name — not out of love or affection but out of sheer relief that her name didn’t fall into the cursed A-J bracket. It’s a small celebration of our shared “success” in this allotment lottery. If nothing else, at least the new rooming situation has given rise to some hilarious room swap attempts on UniSwap. I mean, I’ve half-considered adding “RH2” as my location on Hinge just for the boosted like ratio. At this point, it might even work.
As I sit lazily on this brown bench in the middle of such a spacious, beautiful corridor with no rats as far as the eyes can see, I hope you find comfort in the fact that there are some downsides to getting the best RH too! I see my friends all the time (because they refuse to leave my room), there’s always somebody’s laugh reverberating in the hallway, somebody walking leisurely in those big spacious balconies I mentioned and most of all, there’s always sheer content on everyone’s faces (it gets old). To all those who weren’t as lucky, maybe you’ll get used to it. If not, you can always just turn on your nightlights and read this article to bed so you can imagine what could’ve been!