Living in a residence hall is a love-hate relationship. At one moment, you feel overjoyed to live amongst really cool people your age and become more independent, but at the same time you die a little bit inside every time you find a glob of unknown hair sitting on the bathroom floor or when you hear screaming down the hall at 2 a.m. This past year, I had the all-encompassing experience of living in one of UF’s most highly requested and social residence halls, Broward Hall. Nestled between Newell drive and Broward Dining, Broward Hall is a four-story brick building full of compact rooms and stressed freshmen who are up until the early hours of the morning either returning from Midtown or cramming for an exam.
My (on-going) experience living in Broward is unlike any other normal freshman living experience. I live in a triple room (mistake no. 1) with two amazing roommates whom I love dearly, but no offense, I cannot stand being that close to people 24/7. If you are looking for alone time in Broward, then you have slim pickins’ on where to go. You may get lucky and just have completely different schedules form your roommates, or you can catch a shower stall around 9 p.m. during the week and practically have the whole bathroom to yourself to weep over your huge workload. My roommates are usually never in our room until night time, so I almost always have the room to myself. If you’re like me though, and being trapped in a compact white-walled room for more than an hour makes you anxious, I advise you to find another nook on campus where you feel more productive and at ease
The worst thing about living in Broward is the communal bathroom. I cringe every time I meander in at 12 a.m. trying to use the bathroom only to find that the stall with the last roll of toilet paper is the messiest. Because the cleaning staff is off on the weekends, the bathrooms get really dirty, really fast. This “dirty” is not just your average “paper towels on the floor” dirty, but “clusters of hair on the floor and unknown substances all over the sinks” dirty. If you can, make your restroom visits short on the weekends and if you can get home (#out-of-statelife) go and enjoy a nice clean bathroom for a few days. If you get really lucky, you can even avoid the long-weekend catastrophic mess in the bathrooms by going home.
My three bathroom tips for Broward are: 1) Bring shower shoes, 2) Get an emergency roll of toilet paper for your bathroom and 3) Bring disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer. And please, always try to say a little “thank you” to the cleaning staff because they are the real backbone of the residence halls.
Although living in Broward can be pretty annoying most of the time, this dorm hall is the most centrally located and newly renovated among the dorms directly on-campus. They just renovated three of the four wings with new flooring, fresh coats of paint and brand-new dorm living sets. And the big thing, Broward DOES have air conditioning (Hallelujah!) so you don’t have to deal with box fans and eventually  dying in the Florida heat. Broward Hall is also the Living Learning Community for out-of-state students, so it was a perfect choice for me since I came from Virginia and I knew nobody coming here. Right behind the building is a whole recreational area too with tennis and volleyball courts and a pool, so you can rent free equipment and gather some friends for a nice afternoon of fun!
My last tip for living in Broward is to take advantage of the free events that happen frequently. Throughout the year, some of the RAs and housing assistants will host game nights, food socials, and various other activities to help you become more comfortable with dorm-living and get to know other people in the building! I mean if you’re in college, any event or item that is free is a blessing for our bank accounts.
Living on-campus during your freshman year is something everyone has to experience once in their life and the friendships you make from living next to the same people for a whole year are priceless. I have only known my roommates for about half a year, but I feel like I have been with them my entire life and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. I will admit, I was not even going to consider living in a dorm much less having three other roommates, but I guess it was fate because it has really enhanced by time here as a Gator. When you receive that daunting email over the summer to pick housing I encourage you to definitely choose Broward for it’s awesome activities and updated features and given all that, I think messy bathrooms can be tolerated for a year. Just in case you don’t get Broward,there are a few other halls right next to it (Rawlings, Mallory, Reid) that are not as updated, but are still centrally-located to UF’s main classroom buildings. Good luck, resident hall Gators and here’s to the “charms” of residence hall living.