Sitting in your dull, drab dorm rooms sure can be depressing. White walls and ugly carpeting can drive you crazy if you’re not careful. Studies show that if you don’t enjoy your workspace and living space, then you’ll be less productive and more unhappy. That’s why it’s imperative to feel at home in your dorm, and with a few quick and easy steps, you can make that happen. And I’m here to show you how.

First things first: the walls. If you’re like me, the first thing you thought when you walked into your room was “that grimy off-white has got to go.” Now painting your walls is against housing regulations. That’s why I suggest moving all your furniture into the room a few inches and surrounding your room with bricks. Bricks and mortar are surprisingly inexpensive and give your room a real unique flair. With just a few days of labor, you can have a beautiful brick façade that will be the envy of all your floor mates.

So now you have a great brick wall, but what’s to be done about it? Everyone has posters (and besides, it will be difficult to attach them to solid bricks without causing a potentially catastrophic collapse). You want to be different, and I know just how. Vines! Like old Wrigley Field in Chicago, some ivy crawling up the walls of your room will be beautiful and will help you keep in touch with nature right in the middle of the bustling city. And when they reach the ceiling and continue to stretch out above your head and eventually droop down, your room will be transformed into a real-life jungle.

“But vines need water,” I hear you saying. Well what else are those sprinklers in your room for? By creating a “controlled burn” directly below your fire alarm, you will be able to start your convenient in-room sprinkler system while rarely triggering a full-building evacuation. The artificial rainfall will bring your vines the nourishment they need to flourish in that location for years (and they probably will – your vines will be almost impossible to kill once they have taken root in the cracks in the wall and the floor). One word to the wise: try to aim your controlled burn away from dried stalks or leaves as the situation could quickly escalate beyond your control.

So now your walls are looking their best, but what about those windows? Assuming all light hasn’t been blocked out by your bricks or overgrown plants, something needs to be done about these as well. When I arrived at school, my shades couldn’t be moved, the screens did not completely block off the windows and the glass itself was warped and dirty. So I just took the windows and the surrounding wall out completely. With only a hammer, a chainsaw and a solid afternoon’s work, I transformed my old windows into a beautiful veranda. I even nailed a large piece of plywood to the floor jutting out into the street for my own back porch that’s perfect for outdoor barbeques (though putting more than 20 pounds of pressure on your back porch is generally not recommended). Sure, it gets a bit chilly when wind and precipitation is blowing in through the unobstructed hole in your wall, but that’s part of life here in New England.

You’ve got the backdrop to the perfect room, so now what? Well you need furniture, of course. The boring desks, uncomfortable chairs and ugly bed frames just won’t do it. No dorm is complete without a proper futon, couch or television. But we’re all in college and funds can be tight, so what is one to do? Nothing can get you good stuff faster, cheaper and quicker than good old-fashioned fraud. Buy a P.O. box, get a new phone and put up ads selling yourself as a low-cost moving company. All you have to do now is rent a U-Haul and wait for the calls to start pouring in. When you get a customer, simply take his belongings to your dorm (and the stuff you don’t want to the dump). Then, change your name to avoid detection and do it all over again. If you run into the sucker on the street, hit him in the head with a blunt object to give him amnesia (there is a very specific place on the crown of the skull that will do the trick without hurting him more than is necessary). I furnished my entire room after only two jobs.

So now you have an idiot’s belongings. But you’re not quite finished yet. Wash off everything you’ve just obtained – there are some dirty people out there. This is especially true if you’ve managed to swindle any clothes (you might want to run those for two cycles). But once you’ve finished with that, you’re sure to have one of the most enviable dorms on campus, and all with just a little vision, some hard work and a felony or two.