Goodbye, Beta house.

So Furnald. Honestly, it’s the ideal dorm. It has AC, per-floor kitchens, mostly singles, a pretty lounge, and a good location, right next to Lerner and Pulitzer. It’s quiet and clean. Why is it branded as such a shit dorm? It has such a connotation. “I live in Furnald.” “Oh, do you not like having friends?”

Honestly, I had so much trouble with housing for next year (three different people confirmed as my roommate then dipped) that I really seriously considered a Furnald single for my sophomore year. An upperclassman who has lived in a Furnald single his sophomore year even recommended it to me a while back.  His logic was that by your sophomore year, you have your group of friends and you don’t need to make friends with people in your own building.

I can’t imagine living in an antisocial building, personally, because even though my Carman floor isn’t necessarily a “friend group,” we’re pretty close. In fact, I’m writing this very article in a floormate’s room at 2am on the Friday before spring break. (I’m leaving campus at 6:45am and I still haven’t packed and none of us are sober but that’s a different story.) I know I will miss this floor very much, and I can’t imagine getting off the elevator without someone being there in the shabby excuse of a floor lounge, grinning and asking me what’s up.

But maybe as a sophomore, I will appreciate the antisocial vibe. Maybe I will have so many classes and responsibilities that I won’t have time to grab a beer or two with my floormates on a Monday night during finals week (true story) next year. Maybe I’ll be annoyed when someone on my floor invites me to a floor party and blasts loud music until 4am on a Thursday night because of said floor party. Maybe I’ll just want my personal space, a quiet place to come back to after a long day. Maybe I’ll even cook something for myself in the floor kitchen. Enjoy the air conditioning if it’s early fall or late spring.

If you need that kind of private space, I respect it. Honestly, Furnald sounds like a great place to live. If the cutoff lottery number for a Furnald single last year wasn’t 170 for sophomores, I might have tried to get a Furnald single instead of looking for a roommate. But the fact is, Furnald, despite its lack of socializing and its negative connotations, a very nice dorm that is very hard to get as a sophomore. Essentially, I’ll just have to wish for a decent lottery number as a rising sophomore to get Nussbaum and not even hope for a Furnald single. All the freshmen living in Furnald singles, whom your friend question if you actually have friends, be proud. You almost certainly won’t get a dorm that nice next year.

To my Carman comrades: with the year officially 75% over, with the midterms having been finished, I will miss you. I will miss the puke and mysterious liquids in the elevators, the used condoms in the stairs, the punched-out, broken ceiling tiles, the perpetual smell of weed, the view of the Lerner wall, the proximity to Ferris, the view of Beta house from my window, the alcohol, the people, and everything else. Whether I live in Nussbaum or McBain or whatever other dorm next year, the Carman experience will be unforgettable.