The Days of Our Freshman Lives: Life in Brown

From the outside, the dorm looks pretty quiet. The swipe of an I.D.—beep—and the pull of a door or two doesn’t afford much of a bigger picture. Sure, the occasional girl might be pulling an all-night study session on a worn-out couch and the casual phone-wielder might be having an intense conversation with a family member right there in the lobby, but there’s nothing particularly exciting…until you travel down one of the halls.

Then, the first floor of Brown turns into a home.

Doors plastered with Gilmore Girls quotes and graffitied whiteboards line the corridor. Sometimes they’re open for conversation, sometimes closed for a moment of serious work or sleep. A few residents might be gathered in the hall, laughing or moaning about the latest incident to arise on the field or whatever else is topical that day, chirping a quick greeting to any floor-mate who happens to pass by on her way to class. You’d never guess that everyone here has known all the others for less than three weeks—these newborn friendships are well on their way to lasting a lifetime.

“It’s a welcoming floor,” said freshman Nieve Shore. “Like, I feel like I belong here.”

This sense of welcome is echoed up and down the hall—fellow freshman Asher Gill details the sense of togetherness that she’s already experienced in her time at Brown.

“Everyone’s very nice and supportive of everyone’s goals and dreams,” Gill said.

It’s not just the tight-knit community that Brown residents praise—there’s a distinct feeling of sisterhood that emerges from the dorm’s all-girl rule and it’s unlike any place else on campus. Entering Brown is like entering a sort of haven where everyone can, on some level, relate to your experiences. That’s a gift that people like freshman Celeny Acosta don’t take for granted.

“[Life in Brown is] safe…because I don’t feel the expectation to be a certain way,” said Acosta. “Everybody’s very welcoming and loving and caring.”

One shouldn’t mistake Brown’s profound sense of unity for homogeneity, however. Interests range from Biology to English and Theater to Business and Accounting just in one triple-room; up and down the hall the combinations are endless. Everyone is distinctly different but personalities don’t seem to clash. Hallmates work well with each other, making easy conversation while brushing teeth or singing along to a Twenty One Pilots song that someone’s blaring from the shower. One night after returning from a callback at one in the morning, a fellow resident and I stood talking in the corridor, our conversation turning to hushed whispers as we tried desperately to obey the eleven p.m. “quiet hours” rule. We were just about to say goodnight when another friend came up the stairs, dragging along behind her a wheeled basket full of laundry—she had washed all of her clothes at the most ungodly hour of night and was just now returning, barely awake, to her dorm room.

The three of us ended up laughing so hard that we just fell right there on the speckled carpet and waited until we could breathe again. All of us went to bed after 2:00 a.m. that night, smiles tattooed onto our faces.

I feel like that’s what it means to live there—to be thrown together with a bunch of strange girls one week and be giggling hysterically in the middle of the night with them the next. We might be taking different paths, but when it comes to everyone living on the first floor of Brown, we’re all on this journey together.