Our freshmen live in the smallest dorms on campus. This is an undeniable, indisputable, universally acknowledged fact. The building itself hasn’t been renovated in years. Bunking is not a choice, but a necessity. And even after bunking, the distance from the bed to any wall is less than five feet.
After taking two dressers into account, each bedroom has about 20 square feet of open floor space. And if you do manage to squeeze a desk into a bedroom, you’re down to 15.
Since the bedrooms are so small, two or three desks end up in the common room, cutting down space in a common room that is already smaller than most others. The walls are old and brittle, and the wooden floors are cracked and dirty. And in most cases, eleven people share a small bathroom with two sinks, two stalls, and two showers, all of which could break down any day of the week.
FML, right?
Truthfully, it’s not nearly as bad as it seems. As bad a rap as L-Dub gets, I haven’t met one person negatively affected by the L-Dub experience. In fact, people tend to come out of freshmen year with a fond attachment to their old, small, awful dorm. Ask me if there’s any other dorm I’d rather have lived in, and I’ll reply with a definitive “no.” Except maybe the two-story princess suites in Welch—but those are reserved for only girls.
So why all the love for a dorm that on the surface is clearly inferior to all other freshman housing? Well, here are my reasons:
We have common rooms! (Except for the 5th floor, but they have bigger bedrooms.) Yes the bedrooms are tiny, but the common rooms are spacious, with more than enough room to chill, hang out, and have parties (even if our common rooms are a tad smaller than most others). Truthfully, nearly all other college freshmen across the country would be jealous of L-Dub. It’s just that Yale housing is so amazing that L-Dub just seems tiny compared to everywhere else.- Since the bedrooms are so small, you’re essentially forced to spend nearly all your time in your common room. Why is this a good thing? Because it creates a much more social atmosphere. Rather than being holed up at your desk in your large bedroom, you work, talk, and hang out in your common room all the time. People are constantly popping in and out of your room, stopping by to chat, asking if you want to go on a late night food run to A1 or Yorkside. Whereas people in other colleges rarely see each other on weekdays, we’re forced (even if we don’t want to) to see our suitemates and friends. While this may imply more time-wasting and less productivity, we end up forming tighter relationships. There’s a reason why Saybrook is always the tightest college on campus.
- L-Dub is RIGHT next to Sabyrook. As in, right across the street. As in, so close that I’m willing to bum my lazy butt from L-Dub to Saybrook just to grab ice from the ice machine. You don’t understand how convenient this is.
- It’s right above the post office. This didn’t really matter for me since I’m not cool enough to get much mail, but for the cool kids that do, it’s a plus.
- L-Dub has the best location on Old Campus. It’s the closest dorm to the gym, to the libraries, to the classrooms, and, well, basically to everything. If you’re lazy like me and don’t like walking long distances to do things, this is a big deal.
We have a COURTYARD! The only courtyard on Old Campus (besides Vandy, but nobody ever hangs out there). So on the like 10 days of good weather in New Haven, you can sit and hang out on the benches in our courtyard. Plus, the courtyard becomes the hub of Old Campus on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s where everyone gathers before they go out, and where everyone wanders/stumbles back to after a successful night.- It’s cozy. You’ll hear this reason a lot, but it’s true. There’s something about sleeping on top of each other that brings people closer together. Err, sleeping on bunk beds on top of each other. When you’re all living in tight quarters, when you all have the same thing to commiserate about, you tend to grow closer as a community. And in the end, that’s the most important aspect about freshman year, getting to know the people you’ll be living with for the next four years of your life.
(For the incoming freshmen, if you have any questions at all about L-Dub or housing in general or if you want to know about any other aspect of Yale life, please leave a comment. I need some more ideas for blog posts.)
