This week we are talking about freshman year housing, and fortunately I got to live in the best dorm: Pardee Tower (shoutout to 4th floor)! Pardee Tower is part of the South Residential Area and is located near Doheny Library, McCarthy Quad and Ground Zero, a performance cafe with delicious milkshakes.
Pardee is an eight-floor traditional residence hall, with every floor alternating by gender. Each floor has 18 double rooms, a communal bathroom, a laundry machine, and a lounge for studying. There’s also a large study space on the 2nd floor for the whole dorm to use.
My side of the room before moving all my stuff in!
When selecting my housing choices, I put Pardee as my top choice. The reason I liked Pardee so much is because it has the perfect balance of social and study. You could walk down the hall and always find doors open with people wanting to hang out, but if you needed to buckle down and get work done it was easy to do that too!
4th floor during Welcome week!
4th floor before the first football game!
What truly made my freshmen dorming experience was all the amazing people I met on my floor who ended up becoming my closest friends in college. One thing a lot of people worry about is having a roommate, but luckily I ended up with the best roommate possible. My roommate, Emily, and I met at Explore, and after texting over the summer we decided to live together! Emily and I (we call ourselves Kemily) became known on our floor as the loudest duo because people could always hear us yelling and laughing in our room. We definitely kept ourselves entertained in the dorms and never got bored!
I also became really good friends with some other girls on my floor, including some engineers. This was really nice because since freshmen engineers take almost all the same classes, we were able to study together! Currently, I still share a room with Emily, and live with two other engineers from my floor.
My current roommates, the wolf pack!
Besides living in the dorm, there are other great perks of being a freshman. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I miss having a meal plan at the dining hall. It was really convenient not having to cook for myself, and being able to go get food whenever I wanted! My friends and I really enjoyed going to the dining hall right before closing to enjoy some cereal as a late night snack. Another cool thing about freshman dorms is each floor has a resident advisor who plans fun activities throughout the year. These are definitely worth taking advantage of because you get free food and fun!
4th floor takes on indoor trampolines!
If I could, I definitely would have lived longer in the dorms because I enjoyed it that much. Dorming is such a unique experience because you are constantly surrounded by your friends. It really feels like summer camp, except now you have to go to classes! If you aren’t sure where you might want to live, I would strongly recommend living in Pardee Tower! You won’t be disappointed.
[author title=”Author” author_id=””] href="#" data-color-override="false" data-hover-color-override="false" data-hover-text-color-override="#fff">Button Text
