As a sophomore, living in a quad is like landing a job. And living in a Hiett quad is like landing a dream job. For those of you who are wondering why this is the case, let me give you a brief summary of what this is all about.
Hiett Hall is an apartment style dorm at Lawrence, and mostly upperclassmen get to live here. For the freshman class, room assignments are made according to the form we fill that matches us to our roommates. But for other classes, it all depends on your lottery number- a random number assigned to you at housing selection. The lower the number, the better your chances are of getting a good room. And, for you to get a quad, the average of all four of your quad mates’ lottery numbers is taken into account. Luckily, my quad mates are all juniors and I had a great lottery number. And voila! We have a quad in Hiett with big windows, facing the beautiful Fox River.
Living in a quad is exciting. We have two bedrooms, a bathroom and a lounge area. My quad mates and I put a lot of effort into decorating it. My friends in Appleton came over and gave us a lot of things to put up on the wall and around the room. They also made a tea table out of a photo frame and a board for us to leave notes.
took up a side of the wall to put some of our paintings. Another friend donated his TV as everybody decided to make our lounge the “it” place to play videogames. That leads me to another point: quads are messy.
When I asked one of my roomies, they said “Somebody also donated a PS3 and PS4 recently. We have a lot of guests coming in at the most random times. We also some honorary members.” All of these people that we attract bring in everything with them. The list includes food, clothes, books, bags, dirt and snow. We love welcoming our friends, and their friends and their friends!
Once a week, my quad mates and I get into cleaning mode and make the whole place look fabulous again! We have celebrated birthdays, shared stories and created so many memories in the tiny lounge that it holds a special place in all our hearts.
Living with three other people who are some of your closest and best friends is amazing. We check up on each other and figure out times to get dinner or to use the shower in the morning before classes. We look out for each other and have silly moments laying around and not doing work. We take care of the quad like it is our home away from home. And the people in it are family.
