Right, the promised writings about what I’ve done this week. As I’ve only had three days of lectures I’ll leave that until another post, so today I shall be talking about life in American student accommodation.
The biggest difference between British halls and American “dorms” (although, confusingly enough, the buildings are still officially called halls) is roommates. In all of the undergraduate accommodation you are sharing your room with someone. You also share your bathroom with the room next door (your suitemates, which I thought was a very nice thing to call someone).
The rooms come with very little, just two sets of beds, chairs and desk as well as some movable modular cupboards. For those of you at Lancaster, think better than Ash House (admittedly they achieved that when they built the roof), but nowhere near as good as South West.
This sparseness means that everyone brings stuff to customise their rooms, like carpets and futons, as well as a seemingly compulsory tv (welcome to America…) American tv doesn’t nearly compensate for the loss of i-player though. I miss Dr Who.
My roommate is called Jeff. Jeff and I have rather, um, bucked the trend in that our room has yet to have a futon or carpet, making it pretty much the most avoided place on the floor. We are going to make the “man cave” nicer, I promise… It does, however, have a teapot, which is really the only thing that matters.
Having so many people sharing the same space means that all of the rooms are pretty much communal, especially in the evenings, with people wandering in and out as they please. Within the closest five or six rooms, someone will have everything, so one night we’ll be playing on the Wii in one room, the next night watching films on the massive tv next door.
That’s enough about the rooms, what about the people. Well, my conversations with them are pretty much summed up by the title- they love the way I speak. Now I wouldn’t have said I have a particularly perfect English accent, but no one seems to care- when I went along the hall talking to people I just got: “can you talk?” “Just say something!” And once, somewhat disturbingly: “say something seductive!” Ok…
Next, when I say I study astrophysics, loads of people have said “can you help me with my math?” This is perhaps understandable- every student here has got to do some maths, regardless of subject and most of the people in my hall are first years (freshmen here), my maths training is quite, um, advanced compared to theirs. (I carefully us the word training, I wouldn’t say I was actually that good at maths as such!) It’s odd encountering the, um, reverence studying physics gets. I would guess it’s due to the fact that there’s a far lower percentage of physics students here than at Lancaster. Honestly people, it’s not that hard…
But people here are generally very nice, and I’m getting on everyone around me. Is the roommate system better here than in British accommodation? Well I’ll reserve judgement on that for now, but it certainly succeeds in building an instant community in the dorms. That’s my experience anyway; feel free to comment if yours has been different.
Oh and dear America, maths has an “s” in it. Thank you.
no it doesn't :p
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