I spent my freshman year in BU’s Honors College’s dorm, Kilachand. Although it is not technically considered a freshman dorm, it was heavily populated by freshmen who had been accepted into the honors college. I was there because I was accepted into the specialty housing that the dorm hosts; the Writers’ Corridor.
Kilachand Honors College. Photo credit: Boston University
I took valuable friends to its meetings all the time. And most of those friends lived on Bay State Road as well. I would spend time in Towers, walk back in the freezing cold, listening to the rustle of leaves with my eyes being drawn towards the bright lights of Fenway. What I loved most about Bay State Road was the aura it created. It felt refreshing to walk down. There were downsides to it, like how sometimes it could be a bit isolated and how the community was smaller to me as a freshman than it would be if I was living in, say, Warren Towers.
Writers’ Corridor was great. We ended up publishing (still publishing) a small magazine to circulate around BU in honor of the man who actually died right next door to me— Eugene O’Neill. I also spent countless hours in Kilachand’s common rooms— it’s where I did most of my socializing and my studying. The latest I’ve managed to stay downstairs would be around 5 or 6 am in the morning.
Bay State Road. Photo credit: Boston University
This year I moved into an apartment in South Campus and I feel like it couldn’t be any different. First of all, my apartment is in the basement, so there’s already a limited amount of sunlight coming in. I’m someone who thrives off of sunlight— if there isn’t much, I’m not starting off on the right foot. There is enough for me to have adjusted to the environment, so for now, I’m doing okay.
My main problem with being in the basement is that if I leave the blinds open during the day and forget to close them at night, I’ll have people passing by who will stop and stare into my apartment. My roommates and I have had an incident where we were socializing in the living room only to discover there were people staring in at us from our windows. Once they realized we saw them, they cursed and moved to the next window. So I stopped opening the blinds.
South Campus. Photo Credit: Boston University
I don’t enjoy how far my apartment is from my classes—or the feeling of it being far from them. It’s not necessarily any further than Kilachand was, but it somehow feels worse. It’s probably the bridge. On the bright side, I’m about a five minute walk from Target and Fenway as well as the restaurants on Beacon Street. If I leave my apartment and walk about a block in a couple of directions I find myself in busy areas. The problem is that I feel isolated enough that it’s hard to leave the apartment. I have dishes to do, rooms to clean up and food to make. It is much easier to get up and leave a dorm room! It does feel great to have a kitchen, and I’ve discovered that I enjoy cleaning more than I thought I did —though I feel like it’s an acquired taste, the apartment gets dirty fast. It’s like growing up, but not in the way you’d necessarily imagine. It’s the stinky college version of it.
Both dorms, to me, have their pros and cons. I still miss Bay State Road heavily, but I hope that this phase will pass and that I will come to enjoy where I’m living now to the fullest extent. It’s important to look on at the bright sides of things! And I’ll try to keep the blinds up more often, but not at night.
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