The designer dorm room
In the “Republicans fooling themselves” thread, commenter “expat” reminisces:
I just saw a piece on Today about girls entering college who are spending thousands for classes about adjusting to college life, including how to get in to sororities. I got a hug and kiss from my parents before they drove off and left me to unpack my clothes and desk lamp (What? No fridge or microwave?).
I well remember my first day of college. My parents had driven me there and said goodbye in a room bare of everything except my clothes, my bed with some plain sheets and a blanket on it, a cork bulletin board (something I’d never used before), and a wooden desk and chair. There was two of every piece of furniture and the bulletin board, thoughtfully provided by the college. A lonely stranger in a very strange land, I sat and waited to meet my assigned roommate.
The idea was that the two of us would go together to pick out bedspreads and curtains. I don’t remember ever getting curtains; I think we just used the sheers provided by the college. But well do I remember our bedspreads, which I thought were great. It was the 60s, and the fabric was yellow/orange/brown Indian striped cotton, of a type that became ubiquitous later—so ubiquitous that I figured I could find a photo of something like it online even today.
And here you go:
Over my bed I later put a poster sans frame, of the Rousseau painting “The Sleeping Gypsy.” It was an odd choice, I suppose—rather disquieting and not really a depiction of restful sleep. But I loved it, and the stripes in the gypsy’s robe echoed the stripes in the bedspread (which was rarely on the bed, as it turned out; I was a lousy housekeeper):
And that, my friends, was it.
I was not alone in my minimalist decorations. Rich or poor, most of the girls kept it to some bedspreads and curtains, and maybe a poster or two. Dorms were a great leveler; the most extravagant act I remember on the part of any of my dorm-mates was the girl who sent her laundry home each week in a little container made expressly for that purpose. It came back in a few days, washed and neatly ironed.
We thought her and her family mad.
But now it’s come to this, apparently, at least for some students:
“It is extravagant,” Knight says. But “I wouldn’t see any other way to do it.”
Sure, dorm rooms in general are looking increasingly chic thanks to college-friendly offerings from outfits such as PB Teen (Pottery Barn Teen) and CB2 (an offshoot of Crate & Barrel). But a small group of students are taking it to a luxe level, doing as Mom and Dad do and enlisting the eye of experts—those who have decorated the family homestead or those based near school…
“It’s traumatic having a child going off to school,” says Knight, 54, a stay-at-home mom whose husband, Sonny, is an attorney. “Doing a finished, cozy, personalized dorm just makes it better for everyone.”
Has sharing a dorm room gone the way of the dodo as well?
I do envy the young those salad bars in the cafeteria, however. Our food was nearly inedible—which did not keep us from gaining the classic Freshman Fifteen.
[ADDENDUM: I put this in the comments section, but I thought you’d enjoy seeing it more prominently displayed:
I took the bus (alone) in the late 1940s, with my possessions in a wardrobe trunk used by my father in the early 1920s. My 8′ x 10′ room in this ‘temporary’ dormitory building (which remained in use long after I left) had one single bed, one desk, one lamp, and one chair. Bed linen and curtain were furnished by the university. The wardrobe trunk was my closet: the room had no other.
The library was much more conducive to study than my room until it closed at 10:00 pm. Then I went to the men’s lounge at the union building, which was usually empty at that hour. Yes, in those days the men’s and women’s lounges were separate. I wonder if one can study in a common lounge these days.
I just moved my oldest child into her dorm for her freshman year of college.
Yes, things have changed. I probably spent a couple of paychecks on a Mac Air laptop, printer, iron, mini fridge, microwave, Keurig coffeemaker (Mr. Coffee knock-off, but still!) bedspread and mattress pad, iPod dock, lots of bath and body products, tons of IKEA storage items, etc. Ka-ching, ka-ching. That was beore we bought the textbooks. After we moved her in there was a family picnic on the lawn and a week of Orientation festivities for students.
I vaguely remember my parents dropping me off at my dorm with a suitcase, bedspread and a hotpot (remember those?) I think they slowed the car down long enough for me to hop out. There was no welcoming committee and we stood in line for hours to register for classes.
CV: no hotpots allowed in my dorm.
And don’t get me started on the lack or orientation, or the telephone “service.”
We had it very, very hard. Like these guys:
As a boomer, I shared a small cell, er, room, made for 2 with one extra girl. It was awful. We lived like sardines. However, I was one of the lucky ones. Some students lived barracks style, in gyms or lounges.
I suppose the “art” of demographics hadn’t been invented yet. That must explain why Ohio’s Miami University lagged behind when it came to building more dorms: “Where did all these 18 year olds come from, anyway?”
I recall traveling across the country with my parents, and upon arriving, being reassured by my roommate’s dad that he would take care of everything. Considering he was, er, very well connected, we had the best sounds system in the dorm (we picked it up from a warehouse without paying for it). My contribution was a nice comforter for decor, a hot pot, and a rental mini-fridge.
I can see how students would decorate now that so many items are cheaper and more readily available (oh, to have IKEA in college). But having mom still wash your clothes in uncool.
I work for a university and have learned that one must never NEVER refer to “dorms.”
They are residence halls or better yet, “living and learning” communities 🙂
Talked to my freshman daughter yesterday and she happily informed me that she and her friends were on their way to the fancy campus sports and fitness center for “free” Zumba classes.
Those classes aren’t free, kid!
When I started college as a freshman, it was at Rice Institute (later to be come Rice University). It was in Houston in the mid 50’s, so NO AIR CONDITIONING. Our window screens had large holes in them so part of what I was issued when I checked into the dorm was a gallon of Gulf Spray for mosquitoes and a hand pump spray can. Rice was short on dorm space so we had three guys to a room…pretty crowded.
Today’s students are SOOOOO spoiled!
I went hunting unsuccessfully for a photo of my college Indian bedspread, which was quite a lot like Neo’s, except that the stripes were cool, faded blues and greens instead of cheery oranges. I still remember the funky way it smelled of incense and lamp oil and, well, dirt — even after I washed it — just like the dark, dusty college-town shop where I bought it.
Besides that bedspread, all I had for decor in my freshman room was a set of flowered twin sheets, a much-beloved Olivetti typewriter that I think I may have enthused about here sometime before, and the real essential for dorm life that particular fall: the Carole King “Tapestry” album. You could walk down the hall and hear one song or another from that album playing behind every single door, and any of those songs, heard today, still evokes in me the powerful sense-memory of being 17, on my own for the first time and simultaneously terrified and exhilarated. Bare as that room was, I don’t think that decor from Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel would have done a single thing to enhance the best thing about it: the vivid, intense feeling that it was a first step out of childhood and into grown-up life. (Of course, I was nowhere near so close to adulthood as I then imagined, but please don’t tell my 17-year-old self — she was so excited!)
In my junior yar, my roomate and I had a somewhat larger room, so we “decorated” it with some junk shop items. A rickety chair was reupolstered by stapling fabric to the frame. The coffee table on the other wall was decorated with a dead tree branch that with leaves we painted green. Like Neo, we were not allowed things like hot pots or heaters. This was especially inconvenient because my roomate was from the Progresso family, and after every home visit, she brought us a case or two of lentil and minestrone soups. The nun (probably 90) who supervised our floor saw the soup and asked if we had a hot plate. We told her “no; the radiators in our room are so hot we just set the cans there to warm the soup.” She actually bought that.
Oh, dear – nostalgic about your college dorm rooms. (channeling the Yorkshiremen) Hah – I lived at home all through four years of college, and so didn’t collect a degree from any particularly well known diploma provider, but then I graduated without any loan debt to speak of. (In fact, made it with a surplus, which I blew on spending the summer following graduation in England.)
I did encounter the full dorm experience in the military (take that, you wussy civilian-types!) at my first duty station, where we each had individual rooms – rather small ones, the largest being 12 x 10 or so, twenty or so dorm rooms to a floor, with four shared bathrooms (1 toilet, four sinks, one shower per bathroom) each floor. Grey industrial lino, institutional bed, desk, dresser with mirror, straight chair, liocking closet with a sliding door, and some shelves on adjustable metal brackets over the desk. Large window, with screen – no AC, of course. Some of the rooms had inherited the dignity of a small armchair and a small free-standing bookcase.
But – it was always amazing to me, how the more experienced residents managed to make it an instant home. One girl unpacked her hold luggage; on the top was a small area rug, a set of matching curtains with a bedspread and some coordinating throw-pillows. She deployed all that, hung up some pictures, and put some knick-nacks on the dresser, and there she was. Ten minutes, and the place looked like home.
I had a hot-plate and a toaster oven, that I kept locked up in the closet when not in use. What – do you think I ate mess-hall chow?
I was a 25 year old Navy Vet when I stared college as a freshman. My parents didn’t drop me off, I drove myself, got my own apartment, set up my own utilities, and paid for the next 6 years (BSEE & MSEE) myself.
I told my daughters I’ll pay tuition & fees, but if they don’t want to live under a bridge to figure it out. My son I told to man up & enlist or win a ROTC scholarship.
My dorm room wasn’t so bad– two guys in a 12 x 12 area and a bathroom shared with the next room. It didn’t have air conditioning because it didn’t need it. This was in the far north of a state in the upper Midwest, so 80 degrees was rare during the school year. But the heat worked. When we got to choose our own roommates after freshman year, I paired up with a chemistry major who spent most of his time at the library, lab, or his girlfriend’s room. Worked out great for both of us. But decoration was something that was noticeably lacking in the room. We each had one poster, I think. Mine was a tiger or some other cat-themed thing. His was from a Led Zeppelin concert. And that was about it.
What bothers me about this whole trend is that it encourages kids to expect things they don’t need and it erodes their ability to improve their lives on a shoestring. I would much prefer that they see a problem (a bland dorm room) and have enough confidence to do things to make it theirs, whether concocting a window treatment out of sheets or painting a found piece of furniture. You become a stronger person when you realize you don’t need a dorm room decorator. College should also be a time when you crawl out of your cocoon and learn a bit about how the other half lives and thinks.
When I went to college I had almost almost nothing. Everything we had we had to buy, so our room was quite sparse. I think we had a little fridge but no microwave. I had one roommate Freshman year but we almost never saw each other. She had a boyfriend and was gone quite a bit and I was usually down in the theatre when not in class.
As for the food, some of it was inedible, but most of it was really good. We used to sit around tables with nice linens and nice plates with the college seal and flowers on it. We were waited on by students who aid in doing various jobs around the school. I thought the linens and nice plates made for a nicer atmosphere than modern cafeterias do. Alas, the linens and nice dishes have gone the way of the dodo as has the exclusively female school.
FenelonSpoke: You had a fridge? We had to put food on the windowsill in the wintertime to keep it cold.
And that’s not a bit from the four Yorkshiremen (the video above). That’s the truth. I used to buy cheese and store it that way.
Well, my story is a bit of a reverse twist. My first dorm room (1950) was a big improvement over my living arrangement at home. At home I shared an unheated sleeping porch with my two brothers. There was a small bathroom shared by my mother and we three boys. The only thing we had to study on was a tiny dining room table. On the other hand, my dorm room was spacious (about9X12) with a closet, dresser, desk, desk lamp, central heating, and a large community bath shared by about ten of us. It was, in my eyes, quite luxurious.
Many years later we dropped our daughter off at her first college dorm. The college was short of dorm space and had rented two floors of space converted to dorm rooms over an oriental restaurant. The room was shabby, and infested with cockroaches. We rushed out and bought her some roach motels to help with that situation. She was attending school two thousand miles away from our home. We got on the airlplane full of concern. How long would our darling daughter be able to cope with such substandard living conditions? To our surprise she not only coped but thrived. She still looks back on her two years in that dorm as some happy times.
I shared a three-bed dorm room with two spoiled jerks who would fit nicely with the Pottery Barn generation. They brought all their personal belongings. It was ridiculous. Their closet doors always stood open, and in corners of the room were towers of boxes. They went old school on the posters: The Beatles, George Harrison, and Simon&Garfunkel. I brought two cloth suitcases, a box of books, a typewriter, and change of shoes.
It should have been a nice room. It was on the corner and therefore had a bit more space and cross-ventilation. One roomie brought a rug remnant, I brought a little fridge, and the third snagged a chair from the commons area.
Unfortunately, my roomies were slobs. One put a dent in the fridge by using it as a step to get into the bunkbed (too lazy to use the ladder) and the other attracted maggots with rotten food under the bed. When I was kicked out the room (2 nights a week based on a 2/3 vote), they’d use my desk because it was clean. The last straw for me was the time I had to use a pencil to lift dirty underwear COVERING the only comfy chair so that my mom could sit down.
The one lesson I learned was that conservatives were often nicer than self-identified liberals. My two roomies decried intolerance, the ills of hetero-normative bias, etc. But when they were weren’t borrowing my things without permission (it was easier to find my hairbrush than theirs), they were mocking my rural upbringing, my religion, or my lower socio-economic class. In contrast, my rich conservative classmates may have grown up in another world, but never treated me like I shouldn’t exist.