There's No Place Like Home...Kinda

Being in college is a new experience, since we all have to leave home and thrust ourselves into an entirely new environment with people we don't know. However, as time passes, we establish ourselves and tend to find places where we are most comfortable. For me, this is the common room on the third floor of the Keyes building. Normally, one would expect me to be a visitor of the first floor common room, but their are vending machines there which is a key feature that the third floor common room lacks. The room is shaped like a trapezoid. Two doors at each end, a large set of glass windows serving as a wall on East side of the building. Near the windows are two tables which each have 4 chairs. On the opposite end of the room are two big chairs. In between these chairs and the tables are two sofas and another pair of chairs. Each are symmetrically aranged so that the are facing each other. While the walls were initial bare, our resident artist, Lindsay, drew a bunch posters for us which are really awesome (including a poster of Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride. Looks Like Sirius Black though.)
The people who are always in the room are members of all floors and not just the 3rd floor. We have at least one or two students from the 1st, 2nd, and 4th floors. While it is understood that we are all doing work (for the most part), the common room serves as the central hub of residency life in some respect. Whenever anyone wants some company for food, they just come to the common room and ask around the common room. Since it is between both the stairwells, we have numerous visitors. As a result the conversations can vary severely, but we get a better feel for one another the more we interact. In that sense, we've developed into a community with a shared place to talk and share our days. It's nice knowing that there's somewhere to go when you're done with your work and can have an enjoyable time. On weedays, the room offers solace when work has to be done and you just don't want to do it. But you'll get it done. On the weekends, its the place to be, with some party or scandal errupting that can be just as entertaining, if not more so, than reality television. In this way, the common room is more than just a place to go. It's the place to be.