My five and a half hour memory walk took me to all of my old living spaces at Santa Clara University, and here are some highlights.
These are the three places I lived at SCU:
1) Swig Hall, the 11-story freshman party dorm. Yes, it is really called Swig, after Benjamin Swig. Upperclassmen delighted in yelling, “WAKE UP, SWIG!” from below as they passed by at all hours of the night. People often set fire to couches outside or threw items off balconies. Always seems like a good idea at the time.
2) McLaughlin Hall, a quieter dorm, for sophomores at the time. I roomed with my friend Charlotte, a fellow Psych major and Type A student. Our best friends Katie and Alicia were next door. I got to stay in McLaughlin for four days and three nights while visiting SCU a couple of weeks ago. I loved every minute.
3) A 2-bedroom apartment in a complex near campus. I lived there with Charlotte, Katie, and Alicia during most of junior year (we all studied abroad during the fall quarter) and senior year. We had a lot of dinners and occasional dance parties, but we were all latecomers to the party scene, and none of us really drank alcohol until after college. Because of the Silicon Valley dot.com boom in around the year 2000, I had to share a room during all four years of college, and we paid a pretty penny for doing so.
I’m experimenting with using a captioned slideshow instead of posting full-sized pictures, so leave a comment and let me know what you think. Click a photo, which has a caption underneath, and hover on the right side and click the arrow to advance.
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What have you remembered by walking around your college living spaces, or just looking at these photos?
If I were taking a memory walk of all the living spaces I had in college, I think I’d not only have to visit my one dorm and three apartments, but also the miscellaneous apartments of all my friends. The apartment in New Res that Gill, Jenna, Kaila, Ann and Kate shared, Slanty House where Brian and Darren lived, Nay Nay and Parisa’s place over off Jefferson, the Neutral Ground coffee house, the Maroon office (and later the Times-Picayune office): All of these places were as much my home as my actual apartment on Pine Street. I’ll bet a lot of the places look really different now, especially Slanty, which got a facelift after Katrina.
In a way, I’m sort of glad that I don’t have the option to re-enter a lot of these places because I’m sure they’re not the same as I remember. And I’m not really sure I’m ready for the accompanying flood of memories, which would probably be mostly good thoughts coupled with a small mound of less-than-awesome moments I’ve tried to forget over the years. The weird thing about consistently being around people who didn’t really know me in college is that I get to be pretty selective about what I choose to remember and share. I’m not sure if I’m ready to give that up yet. :^)
Ohhh, white boards! Such a fertile ground for creativity and loveliness passing on from friend to friend. I remember it well. Strangely, I don’t remember much negative stuff being written… possibly the fact that it was left out for all to see your nastiness- a good preventative!