This week we’re going to be going through housing at USC! So far, my home away from home here has been Parkside International Residential College (IRC) and Webb Tower.
My freshman year, I got to live at IRC right next to the Parkside dining hall and a couple of steps away from Viterbi’s Ronald Tutor Hall. I definitely enjoyed the suite style of 4 rooms, 2 people per room and two bathrooms (no community bathrooms). I not only got to quickly get to know my suite mates but also my floor mates. In the beginning of the school year, almost everyone has their door stopped open and introduces themselves. I got to meet so many different kinds of people from their type of major to people in ROTC to student athletes. It was also nice to have study rooms on each floor, the dining hall just downstairs and a recreational room (pool table, treadmills, ping pong tables) just on the first floor! I always thought of the rooms as spacious and equipped with a mini-fridge and microwave made study snacks easy to have.
This year, I’m at Webb Tower which is just down the road from IRC. What with having a kitchen and living room area, apartment style housing has a home type feel. It’s great to have people over and watch a movie after cooking a meal in that space. Moreover, being used to a colder climate, I always enjoy the luxury of having air-conditioning during August. Similar to IRC, there’s no community bathroom, the Lyon Center (our gym) is right across the building and Cafe 84 (the dining hall) is right next door! There are study rooms and rec rooms nearby too.
I’ve been more than happy with my choices to live at IRC and Webb because they both fulfilled what I was looking for in housing. While deciding, I knew I would prefer a place with air conditioning, no community bathroom and relatively close to a dining hall in gym. I kept these points in mind as I was going through the variety of housing to choose from and settled on those. Ultimately, each housing, although similar in many ways, have unique aspects that match what different people look for.
