Benzing Dorm Life

I officially recant. Benzing Dorm (or my hall of it, at least), is an awesome place. If I stay at Hillsdale another semester, I'd probably want to keep living here. It's one whacked out, weird, and rather goofed up place, but still awesome.

To save 1000 words (or at least 150), here is a lovely diagram of my dorm to start things off.



Claro?

Now, I can understand why people wouldn't want to live here, and why there were reactions last semester of "Eww! Benzing? That's the LAST dorm I'd ever choose to live in!" when I mentioned it. I hear you guys, and yeah, that was my basic impression of the place, too.

It is, I think, still my general impression of the second and third floors -- from what I can see of them, I still wouldn't want to live there. The second floor, because it's mostly athletes and I'm not an athlete. And the third floor because...well, I really don't know. Because it feels like McIntyre (my freshman year dorm)? Sorry for having no coherent reason; I just wouldn't want to live there. Although it is fun to visit. And it has the Narnia Club headquarters!

Now...the 1st floor. I can definitely understand people not wanting to live here, too. Reasons would generally focus on, but not necessarily be limited to...

• noise
  
  
• language used by some of the girls (crap, shit, fuck, ass, double entendres, etc. etc. etc.)
  
  
• The choice of 'Nigel' as a door decoration

And maybe a few other things that are slipping my mind.

I probably should have been traumatized by my first week there. But my brain ended up being pretty one-track: "Look! People! Yay! Talk!"

With the end result that I discovered a couple other things about this hall:

• Girls who know how to play Risk. ("Ha! The Fascist Confederates of Southern Asia will never surrender to the Greenpeace Alliance!")
  
  
• Classics majors.
  
  
• People writing epic poems.
  
  
• Noise.
  
  
• A good chunk of the anime club.
  
  
• Intermittent hand to hand combat with cardboard poster tubes, mineral water, and Sharpie pens. Usually sparked by some comment about the civil war.
  
  
• Staying up late.
  
  
• Air conditioning.
  
  
• Our hall's unofficial referendum on Benzing identity: "They're trying to make us a party dorm this year, and we DON'T want that. But it's not like we want to be Mauck, either."
  
  
• Cool RAs. Maybe it's just the "let's be friendly and positively reinforcive" training that they apparently switched to, but in either case, I actually know who my RAs are this year, and like hanging out in their rooms.
  
  
• Some really neat people I only knew in passing last year (Paula, Christine)
  
  
• Tons of neat people I'd never even have said "hi" to otherwise. (Megan, Suzanne, Kristi, Kirsten, Avril, Ellyn, Amy, Roseli...)

However cliched it sounds, and however much grief I'm going to get from my fellow Hillsdalians for saying this, I pretty much agree with one of Kate's RA profile answers. The best reason to live in Benzing is the diversity. Or perhaps more accurately, the diverse range of people who are happy and willing to talk with one another. At least on floor 1.

Life would be a lot poorer in 1st Floor Benzing without a Kristi or Megan or Christine or Kirsten or Roseli...or even an Avril. Maybe a bit more calm, or unified, or quiet, or easy...but nowhere near as fascinating. Or as exciting and challenging and fun. I hang out with fairly like-minded people all day, which is awesome-cool in its own right. Let me have my awesome-cool counterbalance as well.