Freshman Dorm: My Suite in Fluor Tower

Even though it seems like forever ago, when I was a freshman I got lucky enough to live in Fluor Tower. It’s an on-campus residence hall, located on the northwest side of campus directly adjacent to both the student gym (Lyon Center) and the Engemann student health center. At 11 stories tall, it also gave me a great view of downtown LA. I had an amazing time living there for tons of different reasons!

Fluor Tower is suite-style

One thing that I really enjoyed was that our rooms were set up as suites. There were 4 suites on each floor, 2 for boys and 2 for girls. Each suite had its own large bathroom with multiple sinks, toilets, and showers (no communal showers for me)! 8 people lived in each suite, with 4 bedrooms of 2 people each. It was really spacious, with large rooms and a common room for each suite that had a kitchenette. In addition to each suite having its own common room, there was also an additional study room on each floor that the 4 suites shared. There was so much space for studying and hanging out, and there were only 32 people to a floor, so it was much quieter than some of the other dorms. But it was still very social, and we all left our doors open so that we could walk around and hang out with one another, which made me feel right at home. Plus, suite-style dorms have air conditioning, which I know a lot of my friends were jealous of!

My bedroom on move-in day!

The suite common room on move-in day (before we decorated it)

It’s really conveniently located

Like I mentioned earlier, you’re as close as possible to both the gym and the student health center. Fluor is also attached to my favorite (and the newest) dining hall, Cafe 84. Whenever me and my friends who lived on the other sides of campus met for food, we always went to Cafe 84, because it never let us down. There is also a 24-hour computer lab above the dining hall, which was really convenient. Also, many of the Viterbi buildings were just a 5 minute walk (it usually took me about 3 minutes on my bike) from Fluor. Even if I only woke up 30 minutes before class, I always had enough time to get dressed and run down to Cafe 84 and make it to class with 5 minutes to spare.

My roommate and I meeting for the first time on move-in day

There were athletes and special interest communities

When I lived in Fluor, many of the freshman athletes were housed there as well. There were suites of water polo players, track team members, baseball players, and tons more. It was really cool to live with them and see what life is like as a student athlete. And they always kept me up to date on when big games were coming up so that I could make sure to be there! Fluor also houses two special interest communities, the Somerville floor (African-American residential theme floor) and El Soy y La Luna (Latino residence floor). Tons of my friends who lived on those floors had great times and still live with the people they met there. Overall, Fluor tower is incredibly diverse, which made for an amazingly interesting freshman experience.

I loved my experience in Fluor Tower as a freshman and wouldn’t trade it for the world. Even as a junior, many of my good friends here at USC are people that I met living in Fluor. If you get the chance, definitely check it out, because it was one of the nicest and most fun experiences I could have asked for as a freshman!