It was fun to be in Brookings this past week. Brookings is the home of South Dakota State University. Both our son and DIL work for the University, he as a mental health counselor and she, in a new position, as a Freshman student advisor.
Classes started on Monday. Last weekend Son helped students move into their dorm rooms. Golf carts were involved, and Son also helped direct campus traffic. DIL helped students rearrange and tweak schedules. Though they can’t and didn’t give us any individual details, both stated the incoming students were pretty anxious.
I started at Concordia in Moorhead in 1976. I had never lived away from home before. A band trip to Europe that summer seemed to have cured me of any homesickness. As an only child it was rather disconcerting to have to share a dorm room with someone, though. I was in the oldest dorm, Fjelstad Hall. My roommate was tolerable enough, but a local girl and more interested in her hometown friends than she was in developing a relationship with me. I quickly found friends on other floors.
Concordia had very strict rules for students. Freshmen and Sophomores had to live on campus. The school openly acknowledged taking an in loco parentis role with students. You couldn’t have a vehicle if you lived on campus. That meant taking the Fargo-Moorhead transit system around town. There was, of course, a total ban on alcohol in dorm rooms. (All that meant was that people got really sneaky.)
I wish all the first year SDSU students well. I am glad they have my son and DIL for support.
What were your first digs like when you moved away from home? Ever live in a dormitory?
Trail Baboon 
My first digs when I moved away from home were barracks at Ft, Ord, CA, then Fr. Leonard Wood, MO. But that didn’t last long. Within 6 months they were in fortified bunkers in Vietnam. Friends were mostly guys like myself.
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My move in to Luther was pretty uneventful. My parents moved a couple weeks before to their new home across the state, so a school friend’s family hosted me while I finished my summer nursing home job. They drove over to “help me move in” which annoyed me.
The s&h had moved in before and gone on the cross country trip a couple weeks before and was helping other freshmen move in when I got there, so I ended up unloading the car myself😐.
On the way down I got the news that DACA was being revoked, and that night at the dinner the Dean did what she could to reassure those students. Little did I know it was to be only the first of several short trips where I got disturbing news. The worst will always be “I don’t take any responsibility at all”. Hard to concentrate on driving after that.
We packed up the dorm, went to Menards to get home repair supplies. We really had no idea what was coming next.
I continue to hope I one day have grandchildren who look at me like I’m making these stories up.
So glad to have you all here.
If anyone goes to the Fair and sees the weights on the biggest pumpkin and the biggest boar, I’d be much obliged. Have to report in to the s&h.
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YA and I are going tomorrow… will find out for you!
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Excellent! We went last year and were rewarded with a cropart entry detailing the history of what we always thought was something only we cared about.
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I had spent 5 weeks living with a family in Mexico the summer before heading off to college. My first dorm was Goodhue, the dorm on the other side of the lake and I was thrilled – even though it was the farthest from the heart of campus, I always thought it was in the most beautiful spot. My roommate that year was a gal from Kyoto and we got on well for most of the year. She was the one who taught me to use chopsticks and we had quite an adventure getting a new stereo that winter. Unfortunately she discovered the joy of sex during the spring and that’s when we became quite uncompatible; I had to threaten her with a report to the dean of housing after she came back to the room during the night and “cavorted” with some guy – twice. She never did that again but the last six weeks of the year were cool between us. She left Carleton after sophomore year. (I’ve always wished I had been brave enough back then to just sit up and turn on the light and say “can I watch”?)
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Yikes! Ew.
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You mean, while you were THERE?
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I spent the first two years at the University of Minnesota in the dormitory. I had a roommate each year but we had nothing in common and barely spoke. I made other friends on my floor, one of whom was later my roommate in an apartment and who is still a friend almost 60 years later.
Dorm rooms were pretty spartan in those days. I brought in some clothes and school supplies but I don’t remember needing any help to get situated.
After the dormitory, I moved into a small apartment on the West Bank with a fellow art student who is also still a friend. This is where my friend from the dorm joined me after the first roommate moved to another place with his girlfriend, later wife. Our place on the West Bank tended to get passed between friends, never becoming available on the open market. The rent, which included heat and a parking spot, was $45. We split that two and sometimes three ways.
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I lived in (Agnes) Mellby Hall at St. Olaf my freshman year. It was/is a lovely old building. The room was very small, like all dorm rooms. My roommate was from Kalamazoo, MI. We both liked Shawn Phillips, so we listened to his Second Contribution album when we were going to sleep at night. I didn’t have much stuff there – only my clothes and books.
I had kind of a hard time there. My dad was recovering from severe alcoholism, and my mom was divorcing him. I had always had my own bedroom, so sleeping in a room with someone else was hard for me too.
Students were not allowed to have cars on campus at the time.
I paid for my own education. My dad said he wouldn’t help me because I didn’t want to be a dental hygienist. I wanted to be a musician. So I had to work, and I started a job at the Regional Center in Faribault. I needed to drive there and relied heavily on friends from Faribault to drive over and pick me up. I walked to Faribault once, and rode my bike a few times. It’s about 12 miles. You can see where this is going.
By spring break, tensions at home had come to a head, and I moved in with a friend. By the time spring semester ended, I gave up and began working more regularly. My grandma gave me some money so that I could pay my tuition bill. I enrolled in a practical nursing program a year later.
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First digs were a shared dorm room at the University of Miami my freshman year, Got along with my roommate and made some decent friends that year. Didn’t stay in touch with them, though.
After that, it was back home to work for a year, then enrolled at the U of M. Tried commuting from St. Louis Park to the U on my motorcycle (then by bus when winter came), but hated it. So I moved into a rooming house at 10th and University. A year later moved to another room on 6th St. SE. Both were dumps. But I could afford the rent and cooked most of my own meals.
I’m always grateful for those “humble beginnings” as a young adult on my own because I appreciate what I have now so much more.
Chris in Owatonna
**BSP** I know it’s a long drive from the Cities, but my writing group, Midwest Mystery Works, will discuss our five-author book, The Kill Code Collective, at the Austin ArtWorks Festival on Saturday at 12:00 noon in the author tent in downtown Austin.
The AAWF is a wonderful local art and book fest with all sorts of vendors, activities, food and drink, music, kids’ activities,
etc. Takes place all day Saturday and Sunday (about 10-4 both days). Come on down and check it out if you haven’t already. **END BSP**
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
My dorm room was in Oak Hall at Iowa State University. It represented a masterful act of rebellion. The first two years I spent at the local, now defunct, Methodist College, Westmar College, where I had a music scholarship. I lived at home which I did not want but was forced to do. That went on for two years. I made many music friends and was a positive experience with the exception of living at home. I wanted to leave, so I was accepted at Iowa State University where I transferred some of my scholarships ( not the music one), borrowed my uncle’s pick up and left against my mother’s will. That done, she followed me of her own volition and without my invitation. I had arranged for my cousin, Mary Jane to drive the pick up back. Mom drove Uncle Jim’s pick up and Mary Jane back home.
OT, but topical this week: during those years Dolly Parton launched a 10 episode series called “Dolly” in which she came onto the stage via a swing singing, “Love is like a butterfly…”. I loved that show. Mom saw it and told me Dolly was a tramp, and “What are you doing watching that trash? You will never amount to anything.” During those 10 episodes Dolly was an entirely new source of arguments between us. I was right. Dolly was really talented and mom was misjudging her. So.There.
My roommates at ISU were a freshman sorority girl, great granddaughter of a former Iowa Governor, and future socialite, and a local girl who was rough around the edges. The next semester I shared a room with someone more compatible. My senior year I lived in a student apartment. I liked all of these arrangements and loved being away from home. I loved the dorm, all the dramas therein, but not the pot smoke that was ubiquitous.
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My first year at UMD I was in a triple dorm room. We got along OK but did not socialize. My sophomore year my roomie was a smoker but she never smoked in our room. My first year at the U I lived in Comstock Hall – an all female dorm. My roomie was a sweetie – we got along great and often went to the football games together (her boyfriend was in the marching band). The next year I moved into an apartment just off campus with two nursing classmates and a friend of theirs. I was (and am) a neatnik and they weren’t, which got frustrating for me. I was happy to move out at the end of the school year.
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It was a big deal at Concordia when they turned half of one of the older men’s dorms into a women’s dorm. There was no access between the two halves.
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Have to read the rest later…
First dorm at ISU was in one of the OLD dorms, was just a box of a room with a bunk bed and a couple of desks, small closet. Mid-year the new dorm was complete, we moved over to Maple Hall, more modern furnishings, but I kind of missed the commons spaces in the old dorm…
Summer school after Sophomore year I had an 2-bedroom (furnished – nothing fancy) apartment with 3 other girls. First time we had to cook on our own… I remember trying to make cream of celery soup with my mom’s Betty Crocker cookbook. Luckily it was fairly quiet, the party houses were elsewhere, and one of the girls brought in a KITTEN. I have a favorite photo of kitty on my dad’s shoulder as he sat on our couch during a visit…
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