I wasn’t sure what to expect with my freshman dorm housing experience. I always had my own room growing up, and I was anxious about sharing a room and living away from home. Long story short, living in the dorms was one of the best experiences of my life.
Whenever I had a chance to talk to current USC students, I would ask them which dorms they recommended. New/North always seemed ranked pretty high, and regarded as a particularly social dorm. I figured I’d give it a shot so I put it on the top of my housing list when I applied. When I was confirmed for New/North, I had the option of selecting a room mate to live with. I wanted to have a traditional freshman housing experience so I selected to have a random room mate.
I ended up living in the first floor of New/North. While my hallway was entirely male (roughly 20 guys), it was a co-ed floor. All floors in New/North are co-ed, and some of the hallways were as well. The first floor was smaller than most of the other floors because the lobby, fitness center, and commons are located on the first floor, so it was a smaller community and it was easy to know everyone in my hall.
Me in my dorm room in New/North with some of my friends from my floor.
I got lucky and my room mate was awesome. He was friendly and we got along from the start, we were really good about respecting each others needs in the room and taking care of each other. And living away from home was no problem. You’ll have dining dollars and/or meal swipes, so you don’t have to worry about cooking for yourself. The rest is just laundry and keeping your room clean – nothing you can’t figure out if you’re applying to Viterbi.
The thing I liked best about New/North was definitely how social it was. Most of the time people would leave their doors open, so it was really easy to hangout with your neighbors whenever you had a free minute. Everyone being open to meeting new people definitely relieved some of my anxieties of coming to college. After awhile, once you get close with your neighbors and have become friends with them, it’s really cool living in such close quarters. I was used to driving 15-20 minutes whenever I wanted to see my friends at home, so it was awesome only having to walk 15-20 seconds. I’m still really close with my friends from my dorm and we still hangout every week.
