Living at college is big experience on its own and can be a frightening concept at first, but living on campus over the summer? That’s on an entirely different level.
Susquehanna University is already a small school, with only about 2,500 students in total, but take most of those students away and you really start to feel how small it truly is. Between my sophomore and junior years, I decided to stay on campus as a resident assistant (RA) to the other summer students.
All of us lived solely in the 18th street commons, the part of campus with townhouses that have full fridges, stoves, and ovens. I lived in a single room and was placed with two random housemates who lived in the double across the hall from my room.
It was weird watching all my friends slowly disappear from campus as I stayed behind. When I first moved from my school year housing into the apartment, it didn’t feel all that different. And that was mainly because I was surrounded by everyone else who stayed for the summer. There was enough activity that if you stayed by the apartments, it didn’t seem any different than the academic year.
But our little corner in the commons was the only place that was full of life. As soon as you wandered into the main parts of campus, where all the academic buildings were, it was like a ghost town.
Sometimes there would be more people than usual traveling around, especially around Evert Dining Room, the only on-campus dining service that remained open. Throughout the summer, SU hosted several camps for high school students on a week by week basis. Students participating in the camps lived in West Village suites, a different corner of campus than the one I was living in, so I rarely saw the visitors unless we were crossing paths in the campus center. The few other people I saw on campus were limited to maintenance staff, local residents walking their dogs or their children (some literally with their children on a leash), families on tours and their tour guides (who were also students living in the 18th street commons), and the occasional faculty member.
There were parts of campus that I would frequently visit during the academic year, sometimes multiple times a day, that became basically nonexistent in my summer routine. The Garret Sports Complex was one of the first locations to disappear. The gym hours shortened due to the small number of students and they always ran through while I was at work (which I’m not complaining about too much).
Now, as my junior year is beginning, I’m stuck in this limbo where it still doesn’t feel like the 2018-2019 academic year ended, but we’re already a few days into the 2019-2020 fall semester. It doesn’t help that I took a summer class and spent most of my time in one of the school offices in the main campus center.
I’m hoping that I can shake this feeling off by the second or third week of classes, but for now, I’ve determined that my summer at “Susky” had its benefits and its downsides. It isn’t an experience I regret, but in the long run, I don’t see myself doing it again next summer. It just wasn’t the summer vacation for me, but maybe it was for one of the other summer residents.