It's Not Just a Floor, But A World Unto Itself

Ask I pack up my things, and watch the first of my floormates, or shall I call them friends, leave, it makes me stop and think about what a dorm floor is when you are away at college. You have roomates that live in the same space as you, but really its the whole floor sharing one space. It's much more than a bunch of rooms making up a floor, however. When you spend most of your waking hours on the floor, it becomes your own little world. No one else experiences a floor unless they are a part of it.

Only if you live on a floor do you see the constant inner workings of the things that make it turn. Though my roommates were definently not the best this year, I have no complaints about the rest of my floor. It started out as a place with many strangers coming together cause this is the floor they were assigned. Now, I feel a little sadness and lost as each of my new friends and floormates packs his things and heads home. I see each one leave and remember the very good times we have had together this year, and how we have lived together and changed each other. We are like an ecosystem, in the larger ecosystem that is IU. We rely on each other in more ways than you can ever imagine before experiencing it. I looked forward to living the dorm life for many years, and I'm sad to see it pass. It was one hell of an experience.

If you went to every floor in every dorm at IU, you would not find two that are even remotely similar. We create such a unique space by bringing 50 strangers together and making them live on one floor for a year. It's the kind of thing you can experience no where else. What other floor has Mario Kart tournaments almost every night of the week. What floor can you find people get so excited for the ordering of an extra large cheesy bread from Mad Mushroom? We have developed an indentity, and if you had ever been to floor 11, you could pick out what we share. There is so much about this floor and the people on it that I love that I couldn't even begin to write about it.

I hate to see it go, but I know there is so much more to get excited for. I'll take what I have gotten here, and move on to the next thing. I am in Bloomington, I go to IU, but Floor 11 is my home.