Edited by: Nidhi Munot
As my third semester of college begins, I find myself sitting at the same desk in the same corner of my room at home yet again. I spend all day switching back and forth between my bed and study desk. With all my friends leaving for campus, being stuck at home has made my FOMO (fear of missing out) peak. Not unlike the counter-intuitive impulse to listen to sad songs when you’re sad, my way of coping with starting another semester at home has been to rewatch The Edict’s dorm-sweet-dorm and roommate feature videos one too many times. After getting a little side tracked and creating dorm decor pinterest boards, I realized that my recommendation system was flooded with articles on how to make your dorm room feel more like home. That’s when it hit me that the last thing I wanted to do given my circumstances was to read one of those articles. At that moment, I knew I’d very much rather feel like I was at college in a home environment than vice versa. This article is for those of us who are still at home and want to feel like we have a slice of campus right by us. This is a compilation of tips from Ashoka students on how to make your room feel like you’re on campus:
- Paint a horizontal orange bar on a white wall: Specific to Ashoka, the orange bar is a significant feature that on-campus students display with pride on their zoom screen backgrounds.
- Kill a Plant—that’s it.
- Put up a whiteboard/corkboard and pin stuff up: Complete your study corner by putting up to-do lists that make you feel like you’ve got your life together.
- Restructure your room to have your table at the end of your bed: An added bonus of occupying only one side of your room is to blame the messier side on your sibling/fictional roommate.
- Put up pennants from various clubs and fundraisers: To remind yourself of your flourishing social life while you cram a semester’s worth of course material in one night, print and put up posters from various campus events to trick yourself into believing that college during a pandemic is you living your best years.
- Put up posters and memes: “If someone walks into your room and doesn’t know your media preferences, you haven’t done your job right’ says Kiana, an ASP student with years of residential life experience.
- Take the shelves out of your cupboards: Put up hanging organizers instead to complete the feel of being at Ashoka.
- Stock up on cup noodles: Core to residential life in India, a good stock of cup noodles can make life easier. Not only does it give you a chance to claim that you can ‘cook’ something but it also doubles as a birthday cake in case you forget your roommate’s birthday and need something special at the last minute.
- FAIRY LIGHTS! Mandatory for dorm parties and aesthetics.
- Get a roommate with wildly different AC temperature requirements: It isn’t truly Ashoka if you haven’t fulfilled this very important criteria.
If you still don’t feel like you’re on campus, the next best thing is to wear your Ashoka hoodie, grab a tub of ice cream, cuddle yourself and have unwavering hope that we’ll all be in our freezing cold, poster filled, well stocked dorm room with our dead plants by the end of this year.