The Bathroom Situation

Hello again – I know it’s been awhile, but I’ve had these photos of a Morrill bathroom sitting on my phone for a few years now so I figured it was time to post about them and complete the project of explaining life in Morrill Tower!

You might be wondering how 10 people can share a bathroom and not kill each other…but it actually works surprisingly well. Yes, sometimes people leave their dishes in the sink for a week without washing them and sometimes there’ll be dried toothpaste all over the mirror, but for the most part, the bathrooms in Morrill work quite well. I have some photos to explain more…

The Setup:

The entrance to the bathroom is either the first door to the left or right when you walk into the strange octangular space just past the common area and just before you hit the bedrooms. Here’s what the entrance looks like:

And here’s the view into the bathrooms from the door:

And the view on the way out:

Once you get into the bathroom, there are a few components, identical to each suite:

Directly to your left is a row of four sinks – there are only ten people in each suite, generally speaking, so having four sinks is plenty, especially because people’s wake-up and bed times are so different because of class schedule and lifestyle choices 🙂 So there’s nearly always a sink open for use! The only issue can occur is when people leave all their stuff on the shelves above the sink, and space becomes limited (as seen in the picture below), so I recommend leaving your stuff in your room.

To your right as you walk in is the row of toilets, all individual stalls, no urinals for the men:

The toilets just look like toilets, so I did not take a picture of them 🙂 For the most part, these function well, although occasional clogging will happen. Luckily, maintenance is usually pretty on top of it and these toilets are built to take a lot of use.

If you walk straight ahead you’ll see the shower area.

There are two showers, one to the right and one to the left. They are pretty small…bending over to shave is difficult, just fyi. They also get kind of grody and mold removal is not a top priority for the maintenance people…if your curtain does get disgusting though, you can request a new one.

There’s a small rectangular(ish) common space between the two showers to hang towels, robes, shower caddy’s etc. and a few shelves in the showers. But I would recommend taking your shower stuff to and from the bathroom each time so things don’t get cluttered (and to stop other people from borrowing your shampoo when it runs out :))

The showers are by far the worst part of the bathrooms. With females, hair quickly becomes an issue and the mold is pretty gross, so wear shoes.

But as far as usage, there were very few times that I had to wait to take a shower! People take showers at any and all times of day, so if you’re a morning showerer, night showerer, midnight showerer, or noon showerer, there’s almost always an open stall!

The view of the bathroom from the shower area:

A random picture of the trash can and mirror, for your viewing pleasure:

The Clean-Up:

Luckily for you, the university has cleaning women and men who come in and clean up the bathroom twice a week. They take out the trash, kind of/sort of clean the toilets and showers and mostly make everything damp for a few hours. But don’t take them for granted, because without them, that bathroom would get disgusting so fast. They also supply new toilet paper and paper towels regularly, so running out rarely happens!

That’s what I’ve got! If you have any questions, leave them in the comments! Or if you disagree with any of this, feel free to add that too!

This is likely the last post on here ever, unless I learn of something that’s changed, so goodbye, it was fun, that is all!

(I will reply to comments as necessary, however 🙂

You Got The Housing Email!

If you’re like almost every other person living on campus this year you have received your housing email!

I bet you’re pumped! Or terrified! Or don’t know what to think! Take heart my friends, all will be alright. (And that’s saying something because my roommate request ended up not working out 😦 Sad day…but I have Jesus so it’s all good)

So since it’s been a couple of days you’ve probably already creeped on them and learned everything you possibly could from tweets and posts and grams (The insta sort). And then there’s that one roommate that doesn’t have a Facebook and you have no idea what to think about that…

Anyways, the next step is to get in contact with them (all of them) and talk about the important stuff….whose bringing the TV? Not really (but really), find out some actual reliable information about them, year, major, where they’re from, etc. etc. You get the gist. Try to get to know your roommates, cause you have to deal with them for a year at the least.

This is mostly just common sense stuff. You know what you want to know about them, so ask them.

With your roommate(s) specifically find out who a little more about them. Night owl or early bird, do they snore, do they use a white noise machine (my freshman year roommate did), sleep with a fan, etc. And tell them the truth when they ask if you’re okay with something. The worst thing to do is to store up small bits of anger every day they play music really loud while you’re studying until eventually you explode from pent up rage.

This year is an opportunity for you to get to know your peers really well and make some awesome memories. There will be conflicts (there’s 10 of you, it’s inevitable) but it’s great practice for the rest of your life. If you put in the time and effort to really make the roommate situation work, there’s a great chance you’ll survive Morrill Tower.

Roommates…

Let’s face it. All of us come into college with the perfect roommate situation in our minds. You’re going to have so much in common and totally get along, share your deepest darkest secrets with one another and become best friends for life. She (or he) will probably end up being your best man or maid of honor.

The truth is you’ll probably mostly get along, will sort of have some stuff in common but mainly just tolerate living six feet from each other for a whole school year.

In Morrill, not only do you get to test your compatibility with one other person…but nine other people. These are the people you will see every day for the duration of the school year, so it’s in everyone’s best interest if you put your differences aside and just get along.

Does that actually happen? Usually not.

There was plenty of suitemate drama my freshman year. People got mad at each other, somebody tracked mud in the showers, boyfriends basically lived with them. There’s all sorts of issues that come with living with so many people of the same gender.

The best thing you can do is to make sure that you get enough time to yourself. No matter how much you like these other people, you cannot spend every waking minute around them or you will go insane.

You can always request roommates as well. You’re less likely to have this work as a freshman, but it’s possible.

Most cases, however, are like mine. I lived with totally random people that a computer sorted into rooms based on what I said about myself on my housing form (though I highly doubt that actually makes much difference).

(Back in the old days an unfortunate man or woman had to sort all these out by hand and unsurprisingly there were a lot of “Jackie and Diane’s” living together. Hey, you gotta do something to make your job interesting.)

One day this summer you will get the email telling you your roommates names and it will be the most exhilarating and nerve wracking email. Because now you know their names….but you don’t know anything about them.

So you have to find out! In these times of social media, you will creep on your roommates before you meet them and they will creep on you. So maybe keep that in mind when you’re tweeting and posting….and don’t make judgements before you meet them. Just because their favorite band is Nickelback doesn’t make them a terrible person.

Anyway, there’s always a chance you might end up rooming with your best friend and there’s a chance you might be polar opposites, but the key is to find similarities and work on the differences. If you do that, there’s a good chance you’ll survive living in Morrill Tower.

A 10 person box- also known as suites

Morrill Tower doesn’t have rooms like a normal dorm- if you thought it would you must not’ve read the rest of this blog.

The living areas of Morrill are on the 4th through 23rd floors. I lived on one of the lower floors of Morrill my freshman year and will be living on a relatively high floor next year, so once that happens I’ll be able to compare.

Anyway, the rooms are set up in suites- each floor has 6 suites on it and each suite has four rooms. Using the 7th floor as an example, from the 700s to the 750s (700, 710, 720, etc.). Each door will say the suite number: ex. 750 and the suites in it: ex. 751, 752, 753, 754.

There are random doors in between the suites that lead to the trash room, custodian’s room, laundry room and the RA’s single.

Each suite has roughly 10 people living in it (3 doubles + 1 quad = 10 people)

Here is a pic of the whole suite setup:

Here is a pic of the front door to a suite from the outside hallway.

The main door to the suite from the hallway

Each suite has four rooms in it, usually three doubles and a quad. Some lucky suites have four doubles, but I have heard that that is not ever going to happen again, so don’t get your hopes up.

The quad is always the room ending in 4, for example 714 would be a quad. I didn’t live in a quad, I would’ve died in a quad, if you have to live in a quad, I am so, so sorry. I wish you the best of luck.

So anyway,  once you walk through the main door to the suite you will end up in a common room with a couch, TV stand (no TV unless you provide one ((cable is provided)) and lamp. My common room was decorated, so it didn’t look so bad. (Ignore the bed, your common room won’t have one)

The common room from the doorway to the hall

At the end of that weird shaped room is a door leading to the foyer. The foyer leads to all the rest of the suites and the restrooms. To your direct right standing in the foyer (it’s a hexagon) is the bathroom, I’ll talk about that in another post. The other four doors lead to the suites.

This is the entrance to the foyer from the common area

I’m going to walk into the first suite right next to the bathroom, suite 611 in this case. (To the left is 612, 613 & 614)

The door to the suite (the number for your room will be at the top)

Once you walk into the suite, you will end up in the common area just for you and your roommate(s).

This is the common area for you and your roommate.

To your left will be a small fridge and microwave (some are nicer than others) and then there will be a desk on each side of the room. No desk is better than the other, they each have two chairs because they’re made for a quad, but I had a double, so I had lots of room on my desk and I used it all. Above the desks are a bookshelf.

My desk (super messy) and my fish! (Mr. Fish)

There is a door directly in front of you leading to the bedroom. The bedroom is shaped sort of like a boomerang I guess…I’ll have a diagram. The beds are located to the far left and right along the outside wall and right in front is a dresser. Above the dresser on the right side is a large mirror, above the dresser on the left is a window. On the inside wall are two closets, if you want to call them that, where you can store things and hang clothes.

Here’s some pics of what my room looks like:

This is the bedroom from the door into the small common area- and a pic of the only window…

My bed and the bunk bed I use for storage.

a shot from standing in the middle of the room

My closets

Here is a diagram of the individual suite:

 

So there you have it, a layout of the whole suite setup from the hallway to the bedroom!

Got questions? Send me an email or comment on this post!

To finish off, a lovely shot of the Shoe from my window!

The Shoe (and tennis courts)

A Rundown of the First through Third Floors

Here I will give you a rundown of the main layout of the first, second and third floors.

The first floor consists of the maintenance offices and leads you directly out to “moat” which surrounds Morrill Tower. At 11pm, the doors to the moat close and you can’t get in, even with your buckid, keep that in mind on a late night.

The second floor is where the C-Store and Traditions are located. The elevator won’t take you to the second floor because that’s where the kitchens, etc. are for the dining in the tower. I glimpsed it once when the elevator was on the fritz. Both of the bridges at the front and left side of Morrill Tower take you to the second floor and the stairs lead to the third floor.

The third floor is the main floor where the main desk, mail area, the glass lounge, a recreation area, the Media, Marketing and Communications Scholars office and a few study rooms are located. There are three banks of stairs leading to the third floor, the main stairs that go towards campus and to Traditions dining, a set on the left that lead to the C-Store and a set on the right that go all the way to the first floor and out to the moat.

In the middle of the whole residence hall is a bank of elevators, the left side of which takes you to the 1-14th floors, excluding the 2nd floor and the right side of which takes you to floors 1&3, 15-23.

So that’s the main layout of Morrill Tower, floors one to three. Check out my other posts about room layouts for specifics about the suites on floors 4-23.