Caroline Wallace ‘23

Features Editor

Welcome to my room in Carlin! Students who live in Carlin have two double rooms and a communal living space in the middle of the room. The college provides you with a couch, two chairs, and a coffee table in this common room. In my room, we use this area the most to hang out in.

While we did not pick a theme for our common living area, we love the randomness of our decorations. On the wall we have a picture of Arnold Scwarzenager. None of us are particularly huge Arnold Scwarzenager fans; however, my roommate Abby’s uncle had a collection of movie posters in college. He gave Abby some of these posters, so the poster in our living room is from this collection. Accompanying Scwarzenager is a life-size cardboard cutout of Kenny Chesney. Again, there is no specific reason why we have this cardboard cut-out. My mom is a Kenny Chesney super fan, and she once ordered this cardboard cutout, so I brought it back to school with me. 

While the walls on one side of our living room may look bare, it is like that for a specific reason: movie night. My roommate Abby has a projector, and once a week we re-arrange all of the furniture in our living room in order to project a movie onto one of the walls. So far we have watched both “Princess Diaries” movies. We love to make popcorn and have friends over after a busy day of classes and work, and watching movies gives us an opportunity to unwind together.

In my bedroom, we have a couple decorations from Newfoundland, Canada, where my roommate is from. I visited her hometown of St. John’s during spring break of our first year. I immediately fell in love with the beauty of the island, and these pieces serve as a reminder of the trip, for me, and a reminder of home for my roommate, Sarah. On our window we have a glass piece of art of various colored houses. This is from an iconic street in St. John’s, and these houses are referred to as the “Jellybean houses.” These houses were my favorite tourist attraction on my trip to St. John’s, and now they add a beautiful pop of color to our room. We also have a street sign labeled “George St.” George St. is the main, downtown street of the city of St. John’s. During my trip there, my roommate and I had so much fun on this street, and I was able to become fully immersed in her culture. 

Another set of decorations that I love are my roommate Abby’s records. Abby has a deep passion for music, and during quarantine, Abby began collecting old records and repainting them. Each of them has a specific theme. One is a tribute to the Disney movie “Up,” and another is 80s themed. Abby continues to create new pieces for her record wall, and I am continually impressed by her creativity and artistic talent.  

What I love about our room is that all of our decorations correlate to different memories we have made or inside jokes that we have together. I think that as the semester goes on we will continue to add to our collection of decorations as we make more memories together.