Dorm Living as a Grad Student

Posted October 7, 2012 by lazylibrarian

Many undergrads cannot wait to get out of the dorms and get their own place, so it almost seems a little backwards to go into the dorms as a grad student…and to stay there for a second year. As all my friends moved into apartments after their first year in GSLIS, I stayed. Not actually by choice, it’s a complicated story but there are some definite good sides.
Take for instance, yesterday. I’m a dual degree GSLIS and History student. I am taking a history class this semester that requires watching one film per week. Lucky for me though I never have to hunt them down, the library has them all on reserve. So I’ve gotten into the routine of making Saturday my “movie-watching day”(And when some of the films are 9 and half hours long it really is an all-day affair).
I grabbed a coffee and a snack from the café on the academic campus and went to go take out the movie. When the movie is on VHS there is a very nice media room to watch it in but I like when it’s on DVD so I can pop it into any computer next to my friend. Of course I realized almost immediately that I had forgotten my headphones… but no worries, Beatley Library to the rescue! Although slightly embarrassed to have to go back down to the cute circulation desk guy so soon, I simply had to go down to check out a pair.
4 hours of a 1960s Russian film later my friend and I decided we had worked hard enough for the day and made a snap decision that we would like to go shopping. We returned our books/movies/headphones and hopped on the bus that stops literally right outside the library. After shopping and eating dinner (at a very cute diner that made me a little homesick) the same bus dropped us off back in front of the dorms.
Of course there are some downsides of living in the dorms, dorm rooms are never palatial but for me the ability to be right on campus for anything that goes on and to be so close to so many things is a great payoff!