“Wait, you’re a senior and you live in Claffin . . . Are you an RA?”
“No.”
“So why do you live there?”
“I like Claflin. It’s nice, why not?”
“Oh . . . ok . . .”
This is a normal conversation when people find out that I’m a senior living in Claflin. I see nothing wrong with living there, but for most of Boston University it takes a bit more convincing to change their minds. People have been conditioned to believe that staying in an underclassman dorm as a senior is a major taboo. I could have lived in StuVi, but why? I suppose I didn’t feel the need to fork out a ton of money; money that I would have to take out loans to obtain, just so I could live in the pent house on Buick Street. If there were no StuVi or StuVi deux then we would not feel the need to live in such lavish accommodations as undergraduates. Maybe I’m too un-materialistic, maybe I’m not able to grasp why people are willing to shell out their own (or more likely, their parents’) money just to live in StuVi.
Go ahead, send me your angry letters, saying why you deserve to live in StuVi and why Claflin is too boring for you. But if I could go back to last year when I was registering for housing, I wouldn’t change a thing.
I suppose my problem with the housing superiority complex that some of my peers seem to have is that they don’t realize that their StuVi room is nothing but a room in a taller building. “You’re only saying that because you don’t live there; it’s freakin’ awesome!”
Hold the phone, Skippy. My Claflin Hall room has everything that I need: My bed, ice skates, computer and clothes. I have a nice view too; the same view that those in StuVi have. The only difference is that I don’t get the ridiculous price tag.
But this isn’t just about StuVi. My generation is one of materialists. We need to have the best of everything. We need the new iPhone, and we need it now! But why is it bad to just desire simplicity in one’s life? Maybe I am too much of a Californian, yoga posing, hippie, but I wish my generation could see that sometimes, when you remove things from your life you actually gain much more.
So, go ahead, live there and enjoy your digs. If it brings you great pleasure to come home to a hotel every single day, then I’m happy for you. But I hope you remember what is important in life. Take time to treasure people, and take time to treasure your present state of being (because you are only an undergraduate once). And after doing all that, I hope that you see how important a housing complex really is. It is nice to live somewhere fancy, but it is not the most important thing in life.
Maria Gellepes is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at mg887@bu.edu
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