Earlier this summer I wrote an article about my experience having an international roommate, which was a pleasant surprise during my freshman year. As move-in day approaches, I started to think about the differences in dorming that I am going to experience my sophomore year as opposed to my freshman year.

For starters, I was confident enough to choose who my roommate would be, as opposed to having him randomly assigned to me. Since I now know people at Pace, I felt it would be best to pick someone that I already knew and whose schedule would work well with mine. It lifted the burden of waiting until I was assigned a roommate and talking with them to plan who would bring items to the room such as a TV and a gaming system. While it was nice to have the option to choose a roommate that I personally knew, half of my friends decided to go take the off-campus decision and rent an apartment.

It’s also going to be a different experience now that half of my friends moved off-campus into apartments for the upcoming school year. Most students dorm their first year, which makes it easier to hang out and work together since the dorms weren’t too far away. This system has changed now that people are in apartments that are scattered around. A few people are living in apartments that are close to Pace such as in 33 Gold Street, while others live in the East or West Village that’s a subway ride away from the dorms. I’m not going to have the luxury of all my friends within at most a ten minute walk, but it’s something that I believe will be easy to accommodate.

The biggest change that I am going to see, however, is moving out of the freshman dorms into the upperclassmen dorms with a variety of students.I lived in Maria’s Tower, which is freshmen-only, and on every floor there are two lounges for people on the floor; a large lounge to socialize in and a smaller one for schoolwork. I grew accustomed to the lounges, as gave every floor a welcoming feeling always seeing a group of people in either lounge. Now that I am moving to 33 Beekman, I am going to have to get used to not having lounges and other upperclassmen who aren’t in the same grade level as me. The floor dynamic may be less sociable because of this, but this won’t detract from my dorming experience. I’m more concerned with having a good roommate than how social my floor is. It may take a week to get used to not having two lounges to go to inside on my floor, but I’m sure I’ll be able to make that adjustment.