Except for campus housing’s tendency to impose totalitarian and arbitrary pseudo-policies, demands, and threats, my housing at Cornell on campus has been great, and off campus, ok.  Let me tell the good stuff first.

I lived on North in Low Rise 8, also known as the  Holland International Living Center (HILC) for my first two years.  It was filled with all kinds of international kids, and organized into a fun suite structure in which a half-dozen rooms were clustered around bathrooms and connected to other suites by hallways.  The events at HILC were great—there were always people doing something there.

However, with 2 doubles and 2 singles per sweet, I ended up with roommates both times.  And, it’s not easy to live with a roommate, now matter how nice they are.  Eventually, they start to get on your nerves, or else communicate some kind of disease you never recover from.  My first roommate, for example, had a huge Asian fetish, which I temporarily adopted to tease him with whose desktop wallpaper could be hotter.  I won; tt hasn’t worn off.

Then afterwards, in my senior year, I lived a quietly defiant life in Cascadilla Hall, where I enjoyed a single.  It was peaceful, except when a missive came down from my RHD that I didn’t like.  Friends were in the building, and it was close to campus.  Food was available in ctown.  In short, it was everything I wanted.

However, in my Junior year, I tried living the collegetown life.  It was a failure.  While I rented a studio sublet for $600 a month, utilities, internet, and other living costs could have easily brought that number up over $1000 per month.  At those prices, I wasn’t saving money against living in the dorms anymore, and the hassle of finding housing in Ithaca’s collegetown is generally not worth it.