By Shannon Sandridge

“If you don’t like where you are, change it. You are not a tree.” – Jim Rohm

I’m moving! This semester, I have been living at Brooks Residential College, but now I am officially cleared to move into the Honors Residential College next year. I may be able to switch as early as next semester, but I’m still working on that. Before I go on with my story, I’m going to answer a few questions you probably have.

What in the world is a “Residential College”? How is it different from a normal dorm or residence hall?

The Residential Colleges (East Village, Honors, and Brooks) are communities that intentionally work to build relationships among their students. Essentially, these colleges house people who are trying to make their dorms more than just a place to sleep. They also host a variety of activities to foster involvement and community, such as movies, fall festivals, dances and lectures. One aspect of these colleges is that you live on campus for two years instead of one.

Two years? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. The point of these Residential Colleges is to build a community, and that’s really difficult if all the residents leave after a year. It sounds like it would be kind of lame to have to live on campus an extra year, but it’s really not. My friends and I are glad that we’ll get to live next door to each other for another year. When you live on campus, you see people around that you might not be in contact with otherwise, and you build relationships in the dorms. So, when you stay in them an extra year you have more time to keep building and maintaining relationships with people. I am excited about it because there are a lot of people I might lose contact with if I were to leave next year. As you pick your housing for next year, I strongly urge you to consider a residential college as your dorm of choice.

Now, when you sign your two-year occupancy license with Campus Living and Learning, you agree to live on campus for two years. Even though I am moving to a different residential college, I am not trying to break my agreement with Campus Living and Learning. They understand that it’s impossible to predict where you’ll build your strongest relationships. I still want to be on campus just in a different residential college.

Brooks has been fun, and I’ve met some really cool people. But somehow, I ended up making almost all of my closest friends in the Honors College. I’m always over there hanging out with them, so I figured that since I could move that I would. And, it wasn’t even hard.

Here are a few pics of the good times I’ve had with my friends in the Honors College.

My friend got a haircut in the Honors College. This is the moment when we realized we messed up.

Having lunch with the out-of-state friends I brought home for
Thanksgiving break – they all live in the HRC.