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Photo credit: Craig Burdett |
Molly Finkelstein ’08 Reports on the Ups and Downs of Senior Housing
Senior year at Vassar started with a bang — literally. The biggest couch in the world, or at least on campus, got stuck in the doorway of my South Commons house. Assorted housemates and parents grunted and pushed the Green Monster, as the couch would come to be known, through the doorway, as I stood there and served as couch coxswain, shouting directions. After a few more minutes of finagling and very little help from me, the couch was in our house. Our very own house. This was the house my four friends and I had been waiting for, ever since we all first moved onto the third floor of Noyes in August 2004. All of us had been various combinations of hallmates and roommates and JYA-mates for the past three years and now it was finally time for my best friends and I to officially live together, in our own house.
After the honeymoon period (“Oh my God! You’re so close by! We have cable! We have our own bathroom! I’ll cook us all a four-course dinner!”), we began to experience what I imagine being married to four people might be like. Someone kept leaving dishes in the sink, someone kept forgetting to take her hair out of the shower drain, someone ate all the fruit snacks, everyone owed everyone money, no one remembered to take out the trash. Our house started to get dirty. Our house started to smell. We decided it was time to clean. Unlike some houses, we decided to forgo a chore chart and go for the “someone will freak out at the dirt and clean eventually” method. So far it seems to work pretty well. I clean a lot.
After a little debacle involving someone eating all of someone else’s hummus, we decided to give up on the communist approach of grocery shopping and switch to the European Union approach. Each person is an independent nation and cooks for themselves, but we help each other out when someone runs out of cheddar or when someone’s omelette smells really, really good. This results in the fridge being crammed with five individual tubs of hummus and five gallons of orange juice, but it tends to reduce fighting. We still share ice cream.
But, of course, the best part of senior housing is being able to live with my best friends in our own little pocket of the Vassar campus. And even if we fight, I always know that if someone eats all my hummus, I can always go borrow her favorite sweater without asking.