Most students at Carleton live in dorms for all four years, or at least the first three. There are some exceptions, such as the town houses on the edge of campus that the college owns. This year I am living in an interest house: C.A.N.O.E. (Carleton Association for Nature and Outdoor Enthusiasts). It is different from C.A.N.O.E. club, although they are closely linked.
I was, at first, nervous about living in a house and between school, soccer, and other extracurriculars, finding time to cook and do other household necessities. But living in a house has been absolutely amazing! Unfortunately (for me), all meals are vegetarian, but there are plenty of opportunities to get meet for ourselves if we try. We cook Sunday-Thursday, so Friday and Saturday are open to go out to dinner, go to the dining halls with other friends, or cook more if one wants. Cooking was a great experience. Thirteen people live in the house, so we usually had two people per night cook. At the beginning of each week we signed up for a night to cook, and the extra three people signed up for bread, yogurt, or granola, which we also made every week. Materials for breakfast, lunch, and snacks also being in supply, along with fruit and anything else we might need, I almost never went to the dining halls. We for the most part cooked rather good food too, and not once reverted to quesadillas and grilled cheese or the like. For shopping, Annie got a lot of the bulk weekly stuff (thanks Annie!) in her car, or if we needed anything else we just rode our bike down to the store with a backpack.
Socially, living in the house was fun too. Mostly we all got along well. Sometimes dishes didn't get done or something was not picked up, but we tried to all chip in when we had time and help people out. I love all the people, and am sad to see some of them leaving for winter term. I really hope they can come back in the spring! We had a lot of fun hanging out when we did though, with lots of cuddling of course, as is necessary with all C.A.N.O.E. associated anything. Occasionally instruments would be brought out, and others would come over to jam and sing, always a nice post-dinner treat. The campus cat, Toff, is also a frequent visitor of our house, a fun break from the no-pets-in-dorms rule. A few times he even curled up with me when I climbed in bed to go to sleep :).
I love my room and the rest of the house! It is an old house with interesting architecture and furnishings. All the doorknobs have intricate patterns on them, and some of the rooms, including mine, has stained glass windows above the regular ones. The regular windows are large and let a lot of natural light in, which I love. High ceilings give a nice spacious feel to the house. It turns out we have a really neat, spacious attic. Right now it is filled with old suitcases, love letters?, and other ancient belongings, but I plan to clean it out and make it into a comfortable room next term to hang out in. A "penthouse executive sweet" to counter Ryan's basement "executive sweet." This term I built a rope swing from one of the trees just outside the house, and I plan to expand this to a tire swing next term. I am someone who spends almost no time in the place I live, so it is saying something when I say I have spent much more time at home this term than in the past.
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