Old Building, New Memories

My little shoebox of a room was a safe haven from the chaos rampant in McBride. I would wake up to people screaming up and down the hall on a Tuesday night and my roommate and I would look at each other, put our headphones on and roll over. While I didn't have what most would consider a peaceful freshman living situation, I did have something ultimately more rewarding: a community.

Kenyon has a selection of five different first-year residence halls: Norton, Gund, Lewis, Mather, and, of course, McBride. Where you're placed determines a lot about how you perceive your time at Kenyon. For me, McBride was a community of individuals who loved to complain about the mayhem that occurred within the winding hallways. But the chaos, which I will not go into detail about, allowed for an open expression of individuality and allowed me to solidify my place at Kenyon and in my own life.

When moving out, my new roommate and I had a little…issue…with housing selection. We had a great time slot, but not-so-great memories. I remember sitting down for my weekly Wednesday lunch to people talking all about the housing they had gotten. Still in a trance from the mayhem of the Peirce servery, I laughed, “How do you guys know already?” The silence that fell over the table sent a chill down my spine and I sprung into action…just a little too late. So, instead of the Old K double we could have gotten, we were stranded in the building I like to call McBride 2.0…otherwise known as Caples.

We lived in Caples for a semester, and while we were lucky enough to get a larger room, we were still pretty far from most of our friends living on the south side of campus…we called it a “long-distance friendship.” But the good thing about Kenyon is that long distance means a ten-minute walk down the Middle Path.

With frequent visitors and ambient lighting, we were able to make our Caples double a homey. We began to love our Caples cave, as we called it. However, when it was announced that Bexley Hall would open its newly-renovated suites for the second semester, we had no issue moving our home about 200 feet away. The selection process was entirely luck-based, and we had four people ready to fill up the six-person suite but needed two more. I decided to swallow my pride and send a dreaded all-stu email in hopes of recruiting people. Luckily, we had an influx of responses to this email (Who wouldn't want to live in a newly-renovated building?!). After careful consideration, we added two juniors to our pool. 

When we received the email that we would be some of the first residents of Bexley, we were ecstatic. Honestly, I don't know how we secured the suite. When we received the email detailing that our new home would be Bexley, the group chat started blowing up. Pinterest board after Pinterest board was crafted: one for the bedroom, one for the common room, and of course one for the bathroom. We were provided with little information on the interior layout, so instead we took to lurking to drum up our inspiration. My soon-to-be suitemates and I would take walks around the Bexley grounds to look inside the then-unopened building, in order to plan out our decorations. So, with only aesthetic dreams and many, many bags, after winter break, we finally moved into our new home!

The phrases my suitemates and I kept repeating were “Is this real?” and “we shouldn't be able to live here.” The rooms were double the size of what we had expected, even compared to what we saw on our late-night lurks. From the outside, the architecture reflects that of a castle and living inside, I felt like a princess. The massive, intricate windows in the bedroom looked directly out onto Middle Path, and being able to walk straight out of my dorm and get to any of my classes with minimal twists and turns made my daily walk to class feel like walking a red carpet. The abundant natural light, I also found, helped me to wake up earlier in the mornings. I'm not much of an early riser…I rarely, if ever, wake up before 10 a.m., but this semester I found myself often waking up at 9:30 without an alarm.

Many sunsets were watched through our common room window which looked directly out onto a long, wide, side street. After watching a few, I noticed there were always a few minutes where the sun would fall directly on the horizon of the street, and it seemed like you could walk down it forever, straight into the sun. 

One thing I’ve missed about living away from my home in New York was having my own shower. I’ll be honest, it's hard to tell what I like best about Bexley: the inexplicably, strikingly beautiful views…or the showers. Playing my music out loud, having all my amenities in a separate room, and not having to wear shower shoes were never things I thought I’d appreciate as much as I did.

After living there for several months, the novelty did not go away. We were constantly discovering new amenities in the suite, with possibly my favorite one being the dimming lights! As somebody highly involved in stage lighting design on campus, that one felt personal. No longer would I have to worry about the dreaded ambush of “the big light" — I could make it a little light! We added our own string lights and desk lamps around the suite to give the space a more personal feel, but no longer had to rely on just ourselves to escape the abrasive nature of the overhead light. At night, we would turn the string lights on in the common space to create a sleepy ambiance for our daily debrief sessions, and when we all got slammed with work, the big light was perfect for keeping us all awake. 

One of the most comforting aspects of Bexley is the level of safety. All entrances, suites, and rooms are K-Card access only, meaning they automatically lock behind you. When my roommate and I were living in Caples we used to wake up from our slumbers and ask one another “did you lock the door?!”. Not having to worry about this measure of safety, knowing that if the door is closed it is locked, has truly helped me sleep more peacefully at night. Kenyon is an extremely safe campus. Students rarely, if ever, walk into another person's room unannounced, but knowing that this could not possibly happen allowed me to feel at home in my new home. 

As I’m packing up to leave my sophomore year behind, I’ve slowly begun to rediscover the wonder I first felt when I moved in. Taking down my posters and packing up my clothes, I feel sorry to let all of the memories that filled my suite go. I no longer hate being able to call the castle my home, but I will always be grateful for the amenities and suitemate friendships it has brought me. To whoever gets lucky enough to live in Bexley after me, please watch the sunset every night, fill the common room with more energy, and feel blessed for the time you spent there. And hey, maybe say a prayer for the people who lived there before you :) .