I love my floor, Morgan 4. Everyone is great there - the residents, the RAs, everyone. But the friends I made the first week of school live in the conjoining dorm and so, by default, I tend to spend most of my time in Daniels 3.
As we head into the second semester of school, I've put together a list of things that happen when you spend more time in a dorm other than your own.
1. You know everyone on your adopted floor better than the people on your own.
I love the friends I have made on M4 with all my heart, but there are so many people that I still don't know. But I can name 67%]of the people who live on D3. (I did the math because, you know, tech school.)
2. You always have to pathetically wait at the door to be let in.
I have to text my friends every time I want to go hang out in their room to walk downstairs and let me up. The number of times that we've said I should just go to Residential Services and ask them to change my key card so I have access to their floor is probably in the hundreds.
3. The people on the other floors of the dorm think you are the most forgetful person ever.
And speaking of saying something an absurd amount of times, the people on D2 and D4 think I'm a dumb blonde because my immediate excuse for loitering around the door to Daniels like a class-A weirdo is "Silly me! I forgot my key again!"
4. When you are back on your own floor, people notice.
Everyone says "Welcome back" when I'm back on the floor since I usually spend most of my waking hours on D3. It's like a bunch of mini "welcome home" parties.
5. Including your RA.
I was in my own common room one night recently and my RA passed by, did a double take, and then remarked "Nice to have you back on the floor, Emily."
6. Your adopted floor's RAs will learn your name.
Both RAs on D3 know me as 'the Third Emily who is always on the floor but doesn't live here'. And my friend even made me a little name tag to go on his door.
7. You might be there more than some of the residents that actually live there.
I have been told by so many of the residents of D3 that I'm there more than insert-name-here. But who knows, they just might be doing the same thing I am and spending their time on a different floor.
8. People actually forget you live somewhere else.
When I say goodbye at 11:30 or 12 at night, people will sometimes look at me for a minute before saying,
"Oh yeah, I forgot you don't live here."
9. At the end of the night, you have to walk home.
In the beginning of the year, I constantly forgot that even when I was dead tired and just wanted to get into bed, I still had to walk back to my own dorm before I could pass out. I've gotten better about this now that we're in C-term. But it's still an inconvenience.