All the stress that accompanies the start of college can get a bit overwhelming at times. Carving a new group of
friends out of a mass of strangers. Trying to survive the tedium of New Student Orientation. Adjusting to classes with lengthy essays instead of friendly true-false quizzes. Struggling through foreign language classes taught in a foreign language. At some point during this first semester you will no doubt sit back in your room, puzzling over your Arabic-English, English-Arabic dictionary, wondering why you have no friends. In a fit of rage, you might exclaim that the university could at least provide you with decent accommodations. Frustrated, you look at your roommate and observe, “We have the worst dorm room ever. Ever.”
I would like to assure you however, that things could be worse. You see, I had the remarkable opportunity to live in the worst room on campus. You might not have friends, you might be the worst student at Georgetown, you might never understand a sentence of Arabic, but your room will be, no doubt, a marked improvement from my freshman living experience.
Village C West, room 131 was the spot. It was the first place I ever went at Georgetown. Descending those three flights of stairs felt vaguely like entering a dungeon. In general the rooms in Village C have fairly large windows that provide a lot of natural light. However, large picture windows might not be very safe on the ground floor. Who knows what sort of weirdoes might try to gain entry through ground floor windows – even worse, we could enter and leave the building through our window instead of flashing our student ID to a security guard. For our own safety, the ground floor of Village C West has narrow windows, about two feet across, with rusted iron bars protecting us from the harsh outside environment. The narrow windows provide little light, especially since the view from the window is only the alley between Village C West and East. “Oh well,” I tell myself, “we can buy more lights.” Natural light is overrated to begin with.
Living on the ground floor was annoying at the start of the year. During move-in, all the unpacked boxes came down to the first floor to eventually be moved to a Dumpster outside. This Dumpster was strategically located directly next to Village C West, room 131. The only logical time to empty this Dumpster is at 5 a.m., and the only logical way to empty it is noisily. An optimist might say, “at least we do not need an alarm clock,” however, an optimist might also say that the Dumpster will likely be taken away after the first week, that the trash for all Village C cannot possibly pass by our floor all year. This would be wrong.
Have you ever wondered what the garbage from hundreds of college students smells like? I was lucky enough to learn when one hot September day our air conditioner broke. The only way to get the room cool enough for us to sleep in was to open the windows. Yes, the draught kept us cool, as it swept in those charming odors of half-eaten Manny & Olga’s pizza or rotting Hunan Peking boxes. You can try to be Zen about this sort of thing, but only to an extent. The odors are not really damaging anything, nor is the heat truly unbearable, the water damage, however, was a little too much.
Broken air conditioners have a nasty tendency to leak. This at first went unchecked, until one day after returning from a long day of classes I discovered half of our room to be soaked. Some of my extra sheets were destroyed by water damage, as was everything paper-based that had found its way to the floor. Sadly, this was only the beginning of our adventures. In addition to the air conditioning leaking, we learned that sinks drip from the pipes, toilets can leak from the base and a broken shower can flood not only the bathroom, but out the doorway as well. Where are the shower parts made? The moon would be one good guess, because when our shower started leaking it took maintenance over a month to order and install the proper parts.
It gets worse, but I doubt anyone really can compete with the parts I have already related. So remember even if nobody likes you, you are stupid, homesick and exhausted, at least you are dry and can breathe the air in your room comfortably. Next time you are feeling sorry for yourself, take a look out that big picture window and appreciate some of the finer things in life.
Josh Zumbrun is a sophomore in the SFS.
