Ode to My College Dorm Room

I graduated from college two weeks ago. I haven’t allowed myself to truly process it yet. I’m relieved — I’m getting far more sleep at far more reasonable hours, watching TV less guiltily, cooking and exercising, and finally having time to go full-throttle on the job search. But there’s a tingling at the back of my head that tells me if I actually sat down and thought about what has passed, I’d be very very sad.

I was determined since freshman year to not let college be the “best four years of my life.” I always found that statement, and everyone who repeated it in later life with gritty savvy, quite tragic. Am I supposed to live through 60+ years of anticlimax? Fortunately, I suppose, college did not turn out to be the best four years of my life (I think I much preferred ages 14-18). But that doesn’t mean it was not life-changing, and, right now, seemingly the only place where I know how to belong.

So this is a reminder to myself not to romanticize the past four years. I’d made conscious, depressing little mental notes of this in my last semester precisely for this purpose. Every time I was up at 3 a.m. unable to muster another coherent word, every time I could not get good Chinese food, every time I was disappointed by the accolades and job offers my peers received that I did not, I’d think: remember this moment. Remember how exhausted, homesick, inadequate you feel. Thirty years down the road, remember that it wasn’t all fun and games and shitty hard liquor.

This is turning out to be mopier than I intended. To be clear, I did enjoy Princeton, and am grateful for the many things it has given me. Among them, my senior year dorm. I lived in a two-story penthouse with three bedrooms, a common room, and an en suite bathroom. (4th floor Dod, if you’re a hopeful underclassman.) It may not seem like much to people at other schools with off-campus or better housing in general, but it meant a lot to my roommates and me, who’d undergone years of very questionable living arrangements.

Without further ado:

On the right: my bookshelf, desk, and beloved Pantone wall. No, they’re not real paint swatches. They’re postcards of paint swatches that I arranged into a makeshift rainbow. Why? Because I try too hard.

Swatching my nails (Parlez-Vous OPI, a beloved, discontinued classic) against my wall. Because Pourquoi Pas OPI.

To the left: my Insta-wall, Vol. 2 (Vol. 1 was a less ambitious version in my junior year room). Features photos I took in three continents over four years, including many published on this blog. It was cut off at my sitting height so I could lean against the wall.