Make This Dorm a Home

I was hesitant about the whole random dorm “thing” going into my freshman year. I wasn’t hesitant about the concept—in fact, I was keenly aware and grateful for the fact that I got to avoid the speed-dating roommate hunt many of my high school friends underwent. The street cred I earned from telling people every freshman at my school got random roommates didn’t hurt, either.

But as most anxious people would, I was worried about whether a random dorm would work out for me. The concept seems great when you talk to alumni who obviously wish they were still in college. They get this faraway look in their eyes, trying not to cry as they talked about their golden days in the great Sorin Hall and the endless stories they collected in their second home. 

An unspoken pressure to be in the best dorm crept in, so I not-so-casually stalked various dorm Instagrams to scope out the possible contenders. At first, I looked for superficial things, like which ones had the most recent posts and best feed, but that quickly turned into theorizing whether the girls would be nice in Ryan or whether the upperclassmen in Cav seem spirited.

I will never forget when I found out I’d be in Badin Hall — with not just one random roommate, but three. Not even realizing that freshmen quads were an option, a quick internet search led me to discover that I was also pronouncing “Badin” wrong and that it was Notre Dame’s smallest women’s dorm. The next obvious step was to look up all of my roommates and wait an appropriate amount of time to request them on Instagram.

I wish I could say that I was obsessed with Badin Hall, but to be frank, I became nervous about being in such a small dorm. Dorm life seemed like such a pivotal part of the Notre Dame experience, and if there was safety in numbers, my chances of a full-proof dorm experience were dwindling. 

But now, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m now going to be that annoying upperclassman and tell you that it all works out in the end. Yet patience learned is later perspective earned. The process of finding your groove is going to be a lot slower than you will want it to be, but I promise (pinky swear!) that it will be worth it.

So no (suprise suprise), my freshman quad is not my whole friend group today. It wasn’t until the end of my freshman year that I found the rest of my core people, and while I felt behind back then, I am now grateful for the time it took to find them. However hard a pill it is to swallow as a freshman, relationships take time to form, and will often change over time, in college. Normalizing this fact would save a lot of anxiety surrounding freshmen social life. And now, as many people in other dorms feel about their randomly curated friend groups, I often get the feeling that life has treated me far better than I deserve.

And as for Badin Hall as a dorm? Yes, we may have had fewer voices for cheering at the Welcome Weekend Rally. Yes, I got used to hearing “You’re the first person I’ve met from Badin!” too many times my freshmen year. 

But now, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The reasons I love Badin are not our high ceilings or our cute Instagram theme — it’s the fact that a senior wordlessly took an hour to help me decide whether to switch my major and or how our small size means that I know everyone I pass in the hallway. Some of my best memories are playing with upperclassmen in our flag football games, getting to pair together Bigs and Littles and teaching the freshmen our Welcome Weekend chants. Your hall is really the backdrop of your college experience, not the subject. It’s truly the people in it that make every dorm a home. 

And everyone has different experiences — one of my best friends in Badin had transferred from PE after her freshman year, and another friend didn’t meet his closest friends until he went abroad. Just like there’s no “right way” to do college, there’s also no right way to “do” dorm life.

So if you’re a worried freshman reading this, please give yourself some grace. There are amazing people in every dorm on this campus. Focus on getting to know them, and the rest will fall into place.