I have two housemates. One is Carolyn, who has provided our 360 Mohegan home with crayons and Sesame Street coloring books; the other, Kerry, has an unnatural capacity for presidential facts and brings home a lot of granola. 360 apartment three has become our home: a patriotic-themed posterboard of house rules adorns our living room wall (Rule #8, if you’re cooking, no rules apply; Rule #8a, if you’re cooking, it is for us), and we leave love notes for each other on our bathroom mirror. Our refrigerator is filled with cheese. In our specialty housing application, we referred to ourselves as a three-headed monster. I don’t think we’ve ever been more accurate.
The senior mentality is centered around capitalizing on all the opportunities we’ve been given in the time we have left: we’re encouraged to appreciate our professors, to explore previously undiscovered corners of the curriculum, to take advantage of Conn-specific opportunities. The literature we received as prospective students about Conn’s strong points has turned into a checklist: have I consumed enough camel cookies? Have I sat on Tempel Green with a book? Have I truly experienced the beauty of the Plex at night?
As our time in college has progressed, one of our objectives has been to make connections. One of our school’s chief assets is the ability to foster that goal. Conn is known for its small student-faculty ratios, and students are expected to create relationships with professors that ultimately reap some benefit, be it an unofficial mentorship, the agreement to a last-minute independent study or a recommendation. Through College Relations, alumni are invited back to the College to wax poetic on their time here, but also to provide insight on where they are, and more importantly, how they got there. The list of deans and administrators is prolific, which means that there is an abundance of people to reach out to for life advising or for an enlightening conversation. The community we’ve found ourselves in is embedded with opportunities that are contingent on these connections.
But as the semester comes to an end, I’m focusing less on these formal relationships, and more on the ones I’ve built outside of the classroom: the ones that will read over a paper at 11 PM for me, that will pick me up an extra coffee and that attempt, though halfheartedly, to fill my room with partially-inflated balloons for my birthday. The turbulence of finals has reallocated the focus from friends to work; the return from winter break will grant us some early-semester free time before we’re bogged down with work yet again, and then we graduate. The canned question at the end of a prospective student interview has become “what’s been your favorite part about being at Conn?” I tell them it’s the people I’ve met here. My summer roommate who became our multimedia editor, my Office of Admission peers that can commiserate over write-ups, the College Voice staff who are having as much fun on issue nine as they did on issue one: college is not only about building connections and compiling resources to improve your life for the future, but also about creating relationships that enhance where you are now. It’s important to learn and gain experience, but it’s also important to have fun. This isn’t something that can be administratively sanctioned or outlined in the course catalog, but it remains integral to our experience.
I’m grateful for the time we’ve had thus far, and I’m excited about the time we have left. I’m also really sorry I didn’t do my dishes.
