Lotteries Past: How to Survive the Anxiety

The Night Before

So you think your rooming group's all set. So you think the lottery forms are ready to be signed and dropped off to the Housing Powers That Be. So you think you're on your way to life beyond Johnston Gate.

So did I. Last year I was typing my International Conflicts midterm, secure in my plans to block with the people upstairs plus a Weldian friend. Then crisis hit.

I was approached by a neighbor who wanted to set up some last minute negotiations: Wouldn't I consider, one more time, blocking with his group?

Decision: I can't deal with them. This was annoying, not only for the people upstairs, but also for the challengers across the hall. As I entered wishy-washy mode, I was trying everyone's patience. But what was I to do? This was a decision that would affect me for the rest of my life!

Thus the night of agony began. There were trans-Yard phone calls to the Weldian. There was shouting. Tears were shed (mine). And I still had to do the midterm. Who needed international conflict when we had this one?

In the end, I signed with the people upstairs. I thought they hated me. I thought my neighbors hated me. I saw the sun rise that morning, and it was terrifying. My life was over, and I was going to fail International Conflicts.

One year later, I can assess the results: No one involved in the Last Minute Housing Fiasco hates me, although some think I'm wishy-washy. I didn't fail International Conflicts. Basically, everything turned out fine.

Maybe your group really is all set. But to be ready for anything in these final hours, you should adopt the Boy Scouts' motto: Be Prepared. Have the kleenex handy, keep the lines of communication open and stay calm. And then, the only thing you can do is wait. --Molly B. Confer

The Morning After

I think I was actually woken up that morning to the sound of people screaming on the floors above me in Pennypacker. Then one of my roommates brought in our little winner's envelope. After opening it, we joined the crowd.

Cabot House? My group of three guys had put down Quadbuster Quincy. We figured if we ended up in the Quad, we'd get Currier which we could live with. Cabot? We never heard of anything going on there.

Suffice to say, if we had made a list of houses we didn't want to live in, Cabot would top it without a problem.

After dreading it all year, we arrived in September and moved into one of the nicest rooms on campus. Make no mistake--Cabot has amazing rooms. What other sophomores live in a duplex with two bathrooms and five skylights? And for the first few months, things were looking up.

But Cabot's social life did slow down. During the winter, there wasn't much to brighten the 15 minute walk in sub-zero wind chill temperatures.

Facilities at Cabot are great--big rooms, a good grill, six grand pianos and a nice dining hall. But not much can entice people to make the trek to the suburbs.   --Ivan Oransky

The Year After

Something had clearly been screwed up in the way we'd approached our housing form. That fateful morning when we got our letter, we suddenly realized: We'd been thinking that we'd spend a quarter of our time in each of our four choices, rather than all our time in just one.

Now we found ourselves permanently and irrevocably assigned to the one we'd put down for the two days we'd allocated for intellectuality and promiscuity.

Obviously it meant war. No momentary lapse of reason would damn us to the dank labyrinths underneath that depressing medieval castle. We would rail against the grippe of German philosophy and black turtlenecks. We would extinguish smoking. Vegetarians (and other radicals) would convert, or die at our hands. The Bright Clothes Coalition was born.

I wonder what's happened since then--to Adams and to us. Since the huge randomization of last year's sophomores, transvestites and smokers are indeed growing scarcer as students clad in brightly colored oxford shirts make their quiet entrance onto the Adamsian stage.

With an imported cigarette dangling suggestively from my mouth, I look out on the new (and non-smoking) dining hall defensively. I've become attached to the Smiths-esque high school angst I find (to my surprise) I've reclaimed. After all, I put the house on my form. I'd wanted to rebel against Adams, but Adams was rebellion itself...

If you are ambivalent about being put into Adams House, you can contemplate rebellion.

For my money, though, the chances are that you'll learn to smoke instead.   --Jonathan R. Funke

Move to the Co-op

It's spring 1992. It's nearing the end of my first-year in college. And what is everyone worrying about? The presidential election? The starving masses? No. The housing lottery.

Whom to room with? Whom not to room with? And how to choose four houses everyone agrees on? It shouldn't be hard, right? You're not even guaranteed of getting those four anyway.

So why the agony? Why the trauma of discovering you're (oh my God) not popular after all? I looked at my friends screaming at each other over Adams or Kirkland and decided to screw the lottery.

I moved to Dudley Co-operative, where I'll have a single, a living room, a kitchen and save more than $2000 a year.

So as my friends lie awake praying they won't get Quadded, I can sleep in an old wooden Victorian home only a ten minute walk from the Yard.

I'm not trying to sell you anything, but home-cooked food and a real living community definitely beats the scramble over rooming groups and the misery of floating.

So don't take out the measuring tape to check out those sophomore rooms in Lowell, or start memorizing the shuttle's timetable. Don't whine about Mather's less-than-beautiful exterior or Leverett's less-than-average food.

Why lose sleep over that elusive fourth house that no one can agree on? Instead, settle comfortably in a window seat that looks out onto the "real world". Don't enter the housing lottery; move to Dudley Co-op.   --Natasha H. Leland