Hello Soon-to-be Rising Sophomores,
As Northeastern requires you all to live on campus next semester, you will be introduced to the university’s upperclassmen housing system in the coming weeks. Last year, most of you didn’t really pick where you lived, what room you had, or who you lived with. This year you have choices though. However, with great power comes great responsibility and the purpose of this letter is to share a few things I learned this year about choosing where you live, compromising, and living with friends.
By now, you all have your lottery numbers, which probably gave you a serious reality check about where you may end up next year. For your sake, I hope you are not numbers 7,500 – 8,000, but if you are, bless your soul and find a friend or a classmate or ANYONE with better luck than you to live with. The good thing is that with the addition of East Village, Northeastern may not run out of housing again like last year. Here’s to hoping.
Your dream option, the West Village quad with four singles, may not actually come true. It’s something we all had to come to grips with. I know it’s hard. Not getting your first choice is definitely not the end of the world. Going into the housing process last year, I wanted an apartment in Loftman to save money and be close to Marino. I ended up on the other side of campus in Davenport Commons, which is much more expensive and not anywhere near Marino. However, the thing about housing is that you should have a back up plan and then about eight back up plans for your other back up plans. I really enjoy living in Davenport despite wanting to live in other places much more. Northeastern’s campus isn’t that large. It is easy to adapt. This side of campus doesn’t have Marino, but it does have Squashbusters. There is no Wollaston’s or Wings over Boston, but there is Giovanni’s and New York Pizza.
Besides considering all of your options instead of focusing on what you want the most, it is also good to consider how much you can compromise with the people you are going to live with. Hint: If you are already arguing, it’s probably not a good idea to live together. I’m not saying to be a complete pushover in the process. That will set you up for disaster when you actually do all live together next year. Every person has a few non-negotiables and then there are the little things when it comes to sharing a living space. Compromise over little things. If two other people in your housing agreement are clashing, you may want to rethink the pairing. It may not affect you directly, but it will affect everyone in your living space next year whether you want it to or not. Not living with a friend may not mean you aren’t good friends. In fact, it may be the decision that keeps your friendship strong.
The thing I dwelled the least on was the idea of living with many people. In retrospect, I think I should have considered it more. Living with a lot of your good friends sounds like so much fun. It is loads of fun. I have had a lot of a great times this year and I love all of my roommates. However, going from living with one other person to four other people was a huge change.
Living with a lot of people means that there are always extra people coming over, visiting for the weekend, or hanging around. Your apartment is the pre-game apartment, the movie screening apartment, the Football Sunday apartment. It’s wonderful, but it’s not really relaxing. If you are someone who treasures “me time”, this may not be the best option for you. Sophomore year means harder classes and potentially searching for co-op. It’s a much more stressful year compared to freshman year. For me, having time for myself was essential and hard to come by. It may have been better for me to downsize and that’s what I’m focusing on for my middler year.
Choosing housing for the first time is so exciting, but make sure you consider what is best for you, your personality, and your living style, not just what your friends prefer and vice versa. Living with people is tough, no matter how good of friends you are. Make sure to always have patience and consider both sides, not just your own.
No matter what happens or where you end up, your sophomore year will be awesome. Good luck!