I remember both my college move-in days like it was yesterday. From the cartloads of boxes, the suitcases of clothes, and bags of decorations, I have decorated and redecorated two dorm rooms since being in college. I have lived in the same building on my campus for the past two years, and I’ve lived in rooms right next to each other on the same floor. I knew exactly what building I wanted to live in when I toured my university, and since then I haven’t had any regrets on where I chose to live. So much has happened in the past two years of being in college, and my dorm room has been there through it all. 58 credit hours, joining a sorority, getting a job, changing my major, watching the Cubs win the World Series, all have lead me home to my dorm room at the end of each night.

From the different girls I’ve lived with, to the endless amounts of bobby pins that the floor has caught from my hair to the accidental holes put in the walls from command strips, my dorm room has served as my home away from home for the past two school years. I started as a shy high school girl who walked into her dorm room day one with a mix of fear and excitement, to the girl leaving who is confident and ready to tackle her future. I have grown up in my dorm.

Everyone gives dorms a bad reputation, but the dorms are where I met all of my first college friends. The girls on my floor were the first people I talked to when I came to college, and some of them have turned into my best friends. Never would I have thought that the agriculture major in myself could bond with chemistry majors, nursing majors, exercise science, and more, that I couldn’t imagine I’d become friends with. None of that would have been possible if it wouldn’t have been through living in the dorms.

As much as taking a communal shower, long waits for elevators, small beds, and a bedroom for two being smaller than my bedroom at home is sucks, I wouldn’t trade my dorm experience for anything. I had the option to live at home and commute to school, but I wanted to live in the dorms to give myself the true “college experience. I am glad that I chose to live in the dorms. Dorm life might not always seem like the best life, but it’s a life that I’m glad I lived and experienced. To my dorm room, thanks for the two years of memories that I have gotten to share with you. And to the next group of girls that moves into my dorm room, I hope you make as many amazing memories as I did.