Perks of living on an all-girls hall

AKA, a peek inside life at the nunnery.

Photo+by+Kevin+Remington

Photo by Kevin Remington

Brianna Hatch

I’ll admit it. At first, the news that I would be living on an all-girls hall during my first year of college didn’t thrill me. The long bathroom lines, the never-ending wait for showers, the potential drama…yeah, I wasn’t excited, to say the least.

Two weeks later, and here I am, ready to adamantly fight (and defeat) anyone who challenges my hall’s superiority above all others. From the very first group meeting, when our RA dubbed us the WLWE (Women Living With Energy, a spin-off of the WWE), we have wholeheartedly embraced our role as women warriors—and we aren’t afraid to throw around that coined phrase, either.

We made our debut at the First- Year Olympics, decked out in the personalized hats our RA gave us— and to this day, we remain a force to be reckoned with. You might catch us using every chair at Hillel to fit our lunch dates or occupying half of the second floor of the rotunda for our study sessions. And you can guarantee that wherever we go, we are the loudest ones there—so let me offer my apologies in advance; we just can’t help it.

At its core, being on an all-girls hall materializes in being surrounded by the best group of hype-women during every minute of every day. Our common room walls are plastered with our favorite inspirational quotes, and the halls are shrines to our individual successes, featuring pictures of us at a moment of immense pride. From having fashion shows in the common room to determine outfits to cheering on each other’s efforts in academics and extracurriculars, our newly founded support system is already incredibly powerful.

And our bond? Even more paramount. Nights in Gaines 335-346 are spent in the common room, watching Bachelor in Paradise while wearing face masks and eating freshly-baked cookies, or attempting to do homework and winding up completely distracted, or mutually stress-eating from a pile of everyone’s combined junk food. Crying about everything from picking first classes to the ending of Stranger Things is a common occurrence, but even more so is being doubled over, scream-laughing at some ridiculous remark our RA made.

We are bonded by our long-winded, intimate conversations that occur regularly in dorm rooms, common rooms, laundry rooms, bathrooms—you name it. We are bonded by our mutual interests: free food, reality TV, overachievement coupled with laziness, naps and the ability to wear sweatpants and baggy T-shirts and hair towels when in each other’s presence without feeling judged. We are bonded by our shared past experiences and problems, and our future hopes and worries.

And I guess not having to run into a boy after a shower while wearing a towel is a pretty solid benefit, too. Oh, and the fact that everything is always clean–that doesn’t hurt, either.