I decided to build myself a shrine
in case the title sounds too dramatic, this is simply a room tour blog. I call it a shrine because it actually is. our body is a temple, and I consider my room an extended part of my body and my wellbeing. I started to decorate my room on my 19th birthday, 13th september, which was like 2 weeks ago, but I've been cooking up ideas for it so hard over the summer. now that it's done, I would love to invite you on a virtual tour of my room.
I'll be going through quite a lot in this blog, but the general layout will be,
my starting point,
context guide,
room tour,
room lore drop,
behind the scenes,
and my experience being an erd dweller.
my initial views on room decor
I'm a minimalist person, and I remain a minimalist these days, but in a healthier sense. back then, I didn't really see the point of decorating a room. part of it was because I was sharing a room with someone, and our room was really small (a single forced to be a double). most of it was because I find all the set up and cleaning up before moving out for summer not worth it. you'll only spend around a year in it anyways. however, touring people's rooms and houses in my freshman year has changed that completely (shout out to my amazing friends and hell family <3).
minimalism is about creating more space, but it will all be futile if you don't know what to fill that space with. every time I step into their place, I was greeted with this feeling of love and warmth, and I realized what I was lacking. it's very important to fill space with things that we love.
I decorate my room, because it gives me the way I want to feel. one big idea behind architecture is also how people interact with space anyways. and you can engineer your space in your very own way.
I was also reading daily rituals: how artists work by mason currey in the summer. I heard of this book in austin kleon's keep going. looking at artists' routine makes me realize that people of all routines spend a decent amount of time every day in their studio, so I might as well make mine nice. it's not just how we interact with space, but also how we interact with time.
and a year is quite a long time, especially when you're in college. a lot of things can happen and a lot of memories can be made. so suck it up baby.
context guide
my current dorm, erdman, is a building built by anne tyng and louis i. kahn, an estonian architect who's famous for his brutalism and concrete-heavy style. his notable works include yale university art gallery, franklin d roosevelt four freedoms park, the national assembly of bangladesh in dhaka, and kimbell art museum in texas.
 |
| yale university art gallery |
 |
| franklin d roosevelt four freedoms park |
 |
| the national assembly of bangladesh in dhaka |
 |
| kimbell art museum in texas |
erdman was built because our 4th persident, katherine mcbride, wanted to leave her mark on campus. before erdman, our campus was mostly gothic style castles. erdman is significant because it is a symbol for the departure from elitism buildings by m carey thomas, a very racist past president. brutalism is in fact an egalitarian dream, as it's meant for the people. as thomas sankara had it, il faut choisir entre le champagne pour quelques-uns ou l’eau potable pour tous. we have to choose between champagne for some or safe drinking water for all. erdman is definitely the latter.
despite all this, it still remains a scottish castle at heart, and it has such feature in subtle ways. grand central space surrounded by smaller, personal ones. turrets on the roof. large vertical windows. the use of local materials (exterior coated with clad from pennsylvania). the use of one material for the exterior and flooring and another one for interior walls.
now all of this sounds very idealistic, but the truth is that it's one of the dorms that the student body here avoids like the plague. for simple reasons, it doesn't have ac (cold in the winter, hot in the summer), there're lots of bugs and pests, its proximity to the dining hall means that some of it is very loud, and it only has 5 washing machines and 5 dryers for the 100+ inhabitants. for our room draw, it's among the last buildings, along with brecon (because it's far) to still have rooms, simply because no one wants it. I've known sophomores (the class year to do room draw) that moved off campus after spending not even a year in erdman. within erdman, the rooms on the third and ground floors and generally preferred to the basement. and yes I live in the basement.
 |
| my favorite thing about erdman is big windows. everything looks more serene and celestial in this light. |
 |
| why all that concrete? brutalism is directly adapted from the french béton brut, or raw concrete. |
 |
| the staircase that separates erd basement and erd 3rd looks disturbingly similar to the staircase to heaven or hell. but I don't really care because my taste is more hell-based anyways. |
therefore, erdman is an acquired taste, and it takes conscious effort to make it a home. I didn't like erdman in my first year, and I've often referred to it as the prison and joked about its proximity to the wellness center because you're going to need therapy more once you live in there. however, having lived here, worked here, and dined here (like all the time cause the other dining hall gave me food poisoning too many times), I love it actually. I'll share more about my experience, the pros and the cons in the extension part. for now, let's just tour the damn room.
room tour
this part is about you, reader and viewer, to immerse yourself in my room's progression through space and time. there'll be no more words in this part until the analysis / lore part. try to see if you can get all my inside jokes.
13-16 september. I got my scissors back
vietnamese airport security took my scissors away. I lived scissorless for a few weeks, unable to cut anything until my scissors got delivered by amazon.
22-23 september. after party, also the last sunny day before it shit rains for a whole week
24 september. I remembered a really good quote from my grandma's notebook
27-28 september. I had friends touring my room (and it looks like a fucking coming of age movie)
4-12 october. I finished a 3d puzzle (a gift), received more gifts, went thrifting, got stuff for my room, and cooked
23 october - 3 november. I (finally) got a lava lamp (to work), did more experimental things with sunset lamp, and did pottery painting
inspirations and my visions about this room
all that I've ever wanted my room to be can be summed up in three words: a conversation piece. I first heard of this term while watching the analysis behind hieronymus bosch's garden of earthly delights. that painting took bosch a solid 20 years to plan and paint all of them. I stumbled upon this painting while browsing arpi park's youtube channel and it was the background photo (bro also makes bangers poem like honey nut cheerios, which I highly recommend checking out).
 |
| hieronymus bosch's the garden of earthly delights |
back in the day, when rich people wanted to flex and socialize, they would typically invite guests to their place and show them stuff in the wunderkammer (literally means wonder room in german), or cabinet of curiosities. here, they showcase all the cool stuff: skulls, crystals, gemstones, meteorites, and paintings. king henry III of nassau-breda was one such chad. he was an avid art collector and he probably commissioned this painting for his wunderkammer when he visited king philip the handsome. bosch's garden of earthly delights is a triptych, and the thing about triptychs is that you can open and close them as they have panels. triptychs are usually closed and only opened when there're people to see the work. this means that back in the days, only very specific people could see it, and also at very specifc times too (for churches they're only opened for celebratory holidays). if you can see the painting back then it's pretty much an honor.
when people saw it for the first time, they were not ready for it. as the video said, it was like an early form of cinema. life back then is pretty boring as you don't really have much to do as phones and social media are simply non-existent. when people see it back then, and when we see it nowadays, it has the same effecct on us, it makes us talk.
and it's actually easy to talk about, you can make remarks on silly looking things, which they're lots of. the painting itself is a blank canvas so that people can project their views and inner problems out of their mind, pretty much the same way tarot reading works. I heard someone said that taort reading is less of reading cards, but more of reading people's reactions to the cards that they chose.
so my room, the modern day conversation piece, aims to recreate the same vibes. however, I'm not making it ultra-exclusive and secret society as bosch's commissioners did. I'm doing the complete opposite thing, writing about it and posting it online so you can see it whever you are, whenver you want to.
when we go into my room, I want to hear you ask about my childhood and upbringing, and I'll ask you the same. conversation is a lost art these days.
the ce n'est pas un typo (this is not a typo) is influenced by rené magritte's the treachery of image. typo as croissant and croissang differ only by the last letter.
to the left, we have more swole doge and cheems meme with the chorus from videoclub's roi. hyon is basically the first letter in the phrase hell yes or no. other than that it has no connection. hell yes or no by derek sivers is a principle I've been sucking up all summer to fight off my people pleasing personna. in switzerland, there's also a place called lyss. lyss was my name in high school, inspired by alyssa from the end of the fucking world. these coincidences really give switzerland a special place in my heart. lastly, the tarot reading thing is supposed to stir up interesting encounters, but so far I haven't done it for anyone.
to the right, there's this one very cool playlist that I recommend you check out. the dwap tanc tyf thing is also my current instagram bio, and it simply means don't worry about people that are not coming to funeral. this may sound offputting, as I know there'll be people I love that will pass away before me, but it's generally a reminder to not be a people pleaser.
zoning with light
a normal room has 4 walls. erdman room has 8 walls. more walls mean that I can put more stuff on the walls and also zone my room more extensively. I can vaguely divide my room into 3 parts, one for studying (to the right), one for fucking around (middle), and one for resting (to the left). during the day, the middle part gets its spotlight as it has the most natural lights. by night is the time for the studying and resting part, as they both rely on artificial lights: sunset lamp for my table and fairy lights for my bed.
because the human eye has blindspot and can only see 180° at most when sitting statically, I didn't put too much stuff on my desk and the wall after it, which helps me get less distracted when working.
 |
| this is the spotify wall. every object is linked to an artist that I love. when you get the spotify code, there's usually their photo and the code. however, you don't need their photo for the code to work. I chose to cut out their photos to create more impartiality and objectivity when people want to try out new music. I used to be a merch person, but then I realize that I can choose anything that symbolizes them instead of buying merch every single time. |
 |
| yup even shoes have lore. the one in the middle is basically what my instagram account means, deptoongmaucam = orange beehive sandals. |
 |
| I still keep the photos of artists that I curated on this side of the wall. people can have fun recognizing and matching them as they tour my room lol. some artists have the spotify codes up but not their photos, that's because I've written about their discogrpahy yet. but they'll be up as soon as I curate new artists. |
 |
| the centerpiece is for the love of bottles and my pin collection. I had a bottle phase last summer. these bottles were made with plant leftovers that I had from last year when preparing gifts for people. the stick from the bottle to the right was from a bonfire where I first met my hell parent. |
 |
| all of the pins are quite self-explanatory. the orange one is the belousov-zhabotinsky reaction, which is also the nile red logo. you can also see that I'm an ib veteran. one of the pin in this collection is also gave to me by a friend when she visited the met. I got the saguaro national park and the nasa pins when visiting arizona and california over the summer, when I was also having a very strong attachment to wes anderson's asteroid city. those pins validate my junior stargazer membership. the cloth below is simply trader joe's produce bags, which I also used for drying flowers when making the bottles a few months ago. |
 |
| in the corner are my other jewelry boxes where I store all my rings and bracelets. the box on top is the original box for the 1975 necklace. I've annotated its sides with my favorite lines from my favorite songs by the 1975. I'm a pin and jewelry person because they're small and easy to store (I'm an interantional student so moving is a pain). they also allow me to wear simple clothes while still showing my character as a person. and I also believe that picking pins and jewelry are less challenging from picking clothes for classes, work, and lab every day. |
 |
| but now that I have my jacket, everything can just go on there and I can show people all aspects of my identity at once |
 |
| after the birthday party, my friends give me a bunch of stuff. I adorned my room with them <3 |
this is the line that I got from reading my grandma's notebook. it's not her own quote, but something she's copied down from books or newspapers. it's in a vietnamese poem by thái can (its title also have crazy literary references to nguyễn du's the tale of kiều, as cảnh đoạn trường = the intestine-cutting pain = very misery scenes).
thái can is a man and the original tone of the poem fragments reads like this "em nên điểm phấn tô son lại / ngạo với nhân gian một nụ cười" (you should wear make up again / to give the world your arrogant smile. I don't really like that tone of "having someone telling me what to do", so I tweaked the quote a bit to make it more self-centered. it's now "em về điểm phấn tô son lại / ngạo với nhân gian một nụ cười" (I will go back to put on my make up / to give the world my arrogant smile).
near the cool glasses that I begged my uncle for, there's the french translation of the quote
je reviendrai,
et je me maquillerai,
pour donner au monde,
mon sourire arrogant.
although my grandma is not a drama free person, there's a lot about her confidence that I want to recreate in my daily life. I think pride is very important and you should be celebrated for who you are. go where your scholarship is celebrated instead of where you would've been called a nerd instead.
 |
| remember how erdman doesn't have ac? I use natural ac instead. stoßlüften is the german way of ventilating their apartments every day, specifically winter. every day, they would open all the windows entirely for a few minutes to let fresh air in. twice a day, one in the morning, once in the evening, 10 minutes each time. stoßlüften is a reminder to breathe. |
 |
| because it's so important, I have it on my ceiling so it's ideally the first thing I see when I wake up. I got this idea when visiting my friend in new york. his ceiling was filled with 3 phrases: make mom proud, make dad proud, and make his favorite teacher proud. I adapted the same technique with slightly different content. sadly during school days I mostly wake up horizontally instead of vertically because I have to turn off my alarm and rush to work and class. |
|
| on cold days and in winter, fairy lights also makes it easier to get out of bed by giving you more light to adjust with |
the guard your heart part is a bit confusing and can be misinterpreted as not letting yourself feel things just to be safe. in fact, it means more like paying attention to your intentions and being mindful of what you think in your head. I had a bible phase, and it was in the daily verse in the bible app. above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it (proverbs 4:23). another quote that I like better than this one but didn't include because it was too long comes from my general chemistry days. when procrastinating to study chemistry, I came upon this video by dr francl in the march for science philadelphia in 2007. francl loves writing about science and faith, and she quoted fr. pedro arrupe, sj when talking about representation in science. it reads,
what you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
it will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
I really like this quote but it was too long, so I opted for guard your heart, which also carries the same idea.
you can go here for more hd photos of the photos (starting page 30).
then we have croissang's wall of love, which is definitely better than hollywood's walk of fame. it's next to my bed for a reason. I consider sleep death without the commitment, as exurb1a (please be careful watching is content because he's convicted of sexual abuse, but his philosophy slaps) said, sleep is just death being shy. I go to bed with a pretty memento mori (remember that you'll die) mindset, and were I to actually die, these are the things I wish to remember, the people I want to be with, and the stuff I want to continue doing if I wake up again.
it's blatantly obvious that I fucking love photography and film. the yellow photo a film reel of kodak 400. I wanted to try out film photography but I'm just broke. the next 3 photos are references to movies by trần anh hùng. I designed the poster, which consists of a scene from à la verticale de l'été (the vertical ray of the sun, or mùa hè chiều thẳng đứng) and his quote, which I translated into english. the velvet underground is also the music used in that movie. the cover was designed by andy warhol (love lou reed and this man) with the annotation, peel slowly and see. the upper scene is taken from murakami's norwegian wood movie adaptaion, which is also a film by trần anh hùng, where midori is done with being hurt and just want to be happy.
the notice, please do not let your personal longings unattended is a result of me reading the austin trilogy over the summer. it was in his book steal like an artist.
the fuck around and find out poster came to life when I was a bit obsessed with the aesthetic american road signs and the concept of fucking around. fuck around and find out normally means don't try me or else you'll see the consequences, but I like to think about it more of just try and see what you like. it's also one of my guilty pleasures, productive procrastination. doing something that I want to do instead of what needs to be done.
the comic strip and the things to believe in poster gathers concepts in chemistry and baking. let dough rest, let yourself rest, so that you can rise again. the maillard reaction. I believe in the browning of food, and I try my best to not eat frozen food or things straight out from a can without cooking it and seeing the browning of things. fermentation. good things take time. and dof, depth of field. the closer you are, the more you see.
the happy life check list consists of good food and good folks (inspired by a quote by trần anh hùng), good books and good walks (inspired by a quote by cicero). good sleep? I'm a stem student I need that shit. I read about solvitur ambulando, the solution is to walk, somewhere in mason currey's daily rituals. the greatest minds of all time loved to walk anyways. then we finish up with the heraclitus quote about the river.
3 november 2024 update
as you spend more time with something, you get better at spotting little changes in it. whether that be a room, a person, a friend, or a lover. as my room gets too dry or too cold, the paper curls up. I can tell this because I mostly tape 2 corners of a sheet of paper on my wall, rarely 4 corners. the bottom is free to move. when I came back from fall break, I see paper curled up, and it allows me to tell how cold the past few days were. it's pretty cool imo.
 |
| then we have the meme board that my sister made for me over the summer as I was cooking up crazy canva ideas for my room. please follow @im_suffering_this_world if you appreciate her work. I fucking love her art, of course. |
then we have dank memes with cheems and swole dog, the theme that I wanted to do in the beginning, accompanied by a line in my philosophy reading last semester. it was taken from seneca's on providence, an attempt to understand, or at least to justify, why bad things happen to good people.
the answer is that, god loves you, hence [they are not dragged along by fortune by follow her and match her pace].
seeding ambience. a brief inquiry into photography
lighting in most dorms are generally pretty bad. I said this because I lived in rhoads, a bangers dorm, last year and it also has liminal piss-colored lighting in my room. it doesn't matter that much in other dorm, as walls are all white. however, in erdman, the effect is amplified as it has concrete and a pipe running through my room, so it looks like a prison or a mental asylum. I also have a desk lamp, but its lighting is no different, so it looks very pale and white all the time. the erdman light is also placed in an awkward position with distracted lighting, so it usually casts shadows on me when I do homework, and I often fall asleep as a result.
sunset lamp was a lore saver. I first knew about its existence touring my friend's room and saw that her roommate has one. over the summer, I also studied videoclub's discography extensively and was heavily influenced by the ambience that their album euphories. I rewatched amour plastique, en nuit, and mai to get the 80s ambience just right. I didn't say this in the videoclub blog, but in an interview, mattyeux said that en nuit was "the bedroom of [his] dreams", with all the "dream objects" and "dream posters." I also watched mattyeux's studio tour, and he really nailed what he said «bienvenue sur mon univers» (welcome to my universe).
photography's etymology is made up of phōtós (light) and graphê (draw or write). fun fact that's why it's called graphite because you write and draw with it. so the very nature of photography is to draw and write with light. the light is your pain and you chalk, the camera is your canvas, and the things and space are your ideas. if you want to capture good photos, you have to have good lighting. this is similar to how if you want to produce bangers drawing on the board, you should be using hagoromo chalks (literally means feather armor, made from angels' tears) instead of crayola sidewalk chalk.
I've also been using my camera for over a year now, and I know that it performs very shit in distracted lighting conditions. therefore, once we got that lighting down, everything looks significantly better.
you can also manipulate the shape and refraction of light using a can. I got that can from erdman as I worked in the dining hall. it blends well with the brutalist ambience, and it helped me create some very cool northern light effects. my room has celestial, heavenly lighting afterwards and it really helps me romanticize doing organic chemistry homework.
3 november 2024 update
I got myself a lava lamp for many reasons. artists I love, videoclub, and ngọt use them in their songs mai and em trang trí. people also told me I should get a lava lamp in lab (liquid-liquid extraction) and as they tour my room. I pondered about it for a long time, as it's not cheap and is fragile (think about summer storage and everything as an international student). in the end, I finally bought one after finishing my first calc 3 midterm, which threw me into deep depression. for me, depression = impulsive buying. so there we go.
I started out reading amazon reviews and they were all quite bad. my philosophy/ethics code for spending is that when you buy cheap, you're not saving, as you'll throw it out sooner or later, and I deeply hate waste. after browsing r/lavalamps, I decided to go for the original lava lamp, or the one by mathmos.
I started the buying process 5 october. it started out 90 pounds, with 15 additional pounds for forward2me services. I was naïve to believe that the 15 pounds included international shipping. with combine and repack and international shipping, it was 52 more pounds. after 18 days, I got it on 23 october. I plugged it into the plug adapter and waited. to my amazement, the shit doesn't work! even after I let it heat up for 6 hours, the wax still stays at the bottom.
I checked r/lavalamps and mathmos faqs page religiously to troubleshoot. the basics is this: don't put it near the sun so that the lamp doesn't fade. don't put it near a fan (which I did and it solidified at the bottom). your room needs to be warm enough (I turned off the fan and blasted the heater up). don't shake it, the water will go cloudy (I did tilt it back and forth as I would with volumetric flasks to aid wax flow, but it didn't work, and the wax always flow to the bottom. my orgo midterm was coming, so I had to put it in the closet and not think about it for a week.
I still think about it. upon removing the bottle, I realized that the bulb's wattage was 220V as in vietnam, and we use 110V in the us. oftentimes, the wattage doesn't really matter, but for appliances that use a lot of heat, it matters. so I needed to get another step-up/step-down converter, which costs another 39 dollars. in total, it costs me 242 dollars.
owning a lava lamp teaches me so much about relationships, economics, electricity, computer science, chemistry, and self-knowledge.
by relationships, I mean commitment. by economics, I mean sunken costs. by electricity, I mean mains electricity by country. by computer science, I mean cybersecurity. by chemistry, I mean thermodynamics. and by self-knowledge, I mean self-compassion and people-pleasing.
I now call this the lava lamp test. if you can't see yourself putting that amount of care into anything, like in this case, it's a lava lamp, then maybe you're not ready for commitment in a job or relationship. it's the lava lamp for me, but it could be other things for you. one thing I also joke about is as an employer or lover, get your prospective employees or partners a lava lamp from very obscure sources and see how far they can go before giving up or making it work. it helps you separate the dreg from the cream. my crystallization lab days has taught me not to be afraid of loss. what's yours will be yours, and before that, all the separation steps were necessary.
in terms of sunken costs. 90 pounds was what I saw at the beginning, I didn't see the remaining costs that was even more expensive than the lamp itself. the other things that were not money is the in-between buyer remorse, time, and drained emotional energy when I try to work it out. however, I also got another thing, that is truth and relief. truth and relief that it will work in the end, because it's well manufactured.
in terms of electricity, I learn how separated the world is in terms of electrical outlets and voltage. check mains electricity by country.
in terms of cybersecurity, if you don't know, cloudfare uses a lava wall to protect your online information. it needs a code that's unbreakable. the more random something is, the more unbreakable it is. the thing about computers is that they inevitably create patterns, so you would need something else. they therefore have this lava wall. in terms of thermodynamics, wax melts and rise to the top, and flows down as they cool, then rejoin with the wax at the bottom. such movements are completely random and unpredictable. these movements are recorded by a camera, which converts pixels to a code that protect your information.
a question that everyone asks me as they saw the lamp was this: was it worth it? this is a question that only I can answer. and it's yes. just because you have different priorities, you're not wrong or missing out. don't own things because you want to show it or flex it to people. own things because you're truly interested in it, as are willing to commit to it. the same applies to the people you have in your life.
moral of the story: also get therapy to fix impulsive buying. buying more things doesn't make it better.
oh btw this is a list of helpful resources if you want to get the lamp.
how to get a mathmos lava lamp in the us
lava lamp beginner guide (troubleshooting)
behind the scenes
now that you've seen the end, I'll give you the beginning so that you can see how much of a difference room decor can do to your place.
 |
| interesting artefact I found cleaning up |
having a pretty room doesn't necessarily have to make you go bankrupt. lucky for you, I'm also a broke ass college student, and this room make over was well on a budget. I spent around $52 on this room for its aesthetic makeover. you might also want to add a few survival mode items like fan, space heater, and space humidifier to make it a more livable place.
free things to have and where to loot them
- good taste (much more important than having money)
- canva
- willingness to commit some rape on canaday color printers
- scissors
- scotch magic tape (loot from the well's printing room)
- the can (loot from erdman dining hall)
- fan (I didn't loot this my friend was just very kind to give me this)
- delivery of things down there if you (1) bill is > $35 and (2) you get them early so you don't have to wait
 |
| you can't really put a price tag on comfort. invest in what you need, especially during winter when the weather is being a bitch. |
 |
| the top essential thing to help me sleep / get up. eyedroppers, airpods, light remote, and temperature remote. I feel like god entering a room as I can turn the the climate into vietnam. |
I've been cooking up ideas for this room over the summer by spending an unhealthy amount of time on canva. I know it's a lot of stuff on my walls that we've talked about, but some of it didn't even make it to the wall. my initial theme was doge, but I changed it up. here're a few of the demos that I have before the official ones. you can find all of the unofficial demos here.
my experience being an erd dweller
erdman is shaped like 3 diamonds tucked together. the dismembering of the hallway (for some reason reminds me of the bondline structure of heptane) means that given a point in the building, you can't really see too far from where you're standing. this heightened sense of liminality means that people are less likely to stick outside the hallway and talk, something that was more common in my first year. this leads to quieter hallways, and also more privacy and freedom.
as doors are placed at the corners of each room, as you enter the room, it tends to direct you to one of the sides instead of staying in the middle. this means that you're always in a pretty minding your own business state. this may be depressing and isolating for some, but it's been very beneficial to my piano practice. I look at the wall as I practice, so there's less pressure when people walk by.
however, this zigzag structure also creates the illusion that you're far from certain places, like erd pit (the heart of diamond A), when you're in fact spatially close. it's far to walk, but that's not how noise travels. this can be quite hellish if you live near erd pit.
the nature of erdman influences its demographics, which in turn also shapes its nature. erdman is characterized by the abundance of single rooms, which are often inhabited by sophomores, as by the 2nd year most people (1) like to be by themselves and (2) are the last to do room draw. this means that the demographics of erdman is pretty young, or as my friend called it, sophomore city.
by being the sophomore dorm and the dining hall, the erdman experience can be summed up in two words: built-in.
socially built-in
you're technically and socially built in, unless your friends live off campus. you can live here, eat here, work here. after living in erdman, you'll understand that people eat a maximum of 3 times a day, 7 days a week (2 times on the weekends). that's 19 possible interactions per week, and even if they skip breakfast or decide to go to new dorm half of the time, you're still left with a decent 7 times that they will pull up to erdman. this can be very socially beneficial, as you will see your friends around as you all live here, eat here, and probably work here. it's great for scheduling meals together.
however, it can also be mentally detrimental, because you'll also see people you hate around, and there's nothing stopping that. also, sometimes you need distance, even from your people you love.
work-wise built-in, not rest-wise built-in
living in the building that's also the dining hall means that you save a lot of time and energy moving to eat, especially in the winter. because I also work here, it means that I save a lot of time commuting to work. I end up skipping less meals and having more energy to study and work. erdman is also a constant reminder of the hard-earned money and this also leads to me being more financially independent by being more mindful of what I spend money on. erdman really nails that alpha industrial baby gogetter vibe.
because it's so easy to work, it also means that it's harder to unwind. my daily route has mostly been a straight line: from erdman, to taylor hall, old library, park, the gym, and then back. this and the fact that you see a lot of people in the dining hall can make you feel small and claustrophobic rather quickly. sometimes, I completely forget that other parts of campus, like rockerfeller, rhoads and rhoads beach, etc. exist. it can be hard to establish boundaries in a building where you can do anything and most of them being work. that's why I zone my room, but I do miss the in-between walk breaks from the library back to rhoads. that distancing can be inconvenient when you need to eat, but it's beneficial when you need to unwinde before sleep.
epilogue
if there's a word that can describe my experience with erdman, that'd be experimental. while I don't think I'd live here for another year, the experience that I've had with erdman has forced me to see things. I thank louis kahn for the big windows, the freedom to be myself and be by myself, and a chance to grow personally, socially, and financially as a person.
and so both in this life and on the thousand-word journey we have traversed, we will fare well.
Comments
Post a Comment