And of course you shared the tiny dorm room with a roommate. My upbringing had been more spartan than most of my contemporaries, at least materially, so neither I nor my brother joined in the frequent complaints about the lodgings in the dorms. I found my undergraduate years easy academically, with plenty of time for fun and to pursue my personal area of academic interest, History. An important time in my life, even as my memories grow dimmer of it, a half century later.
Quartered Safe in Urbana
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
My first two years of school were as spartan as described here – cinder block squares with community bathrooms and a rec room.
Yep. We all survived. A few of the guys in the hall became commies. Although I’m quite certain that had less to do with the dorm and more to do with the non-stop Jesuit liberation theology being thrown at us. I guess it only works on the weak-minded, like Jedi mind tricks.
Try living in a barracks with 50 other soldiers during boot camp.
Or sharing a very small tent with another soldier on a field training exercise.
The description above seems like housing at Naval Nuclear Power School on the Naval Base in Orlando, Florida before the school was moved to Charleston, SC. And to Sandy’s point, try living with 70 to 100 other disgruntled sailors, marching to the chow hall for breakfast and then to school in the morning, marching back and forth for lunch at noon time, and marching to the chow hall for dinner and then back to housing in the evening unless you’re on mandatory study hours; then you get to stay in school to 2300 hours to bring up your test scores. And to Donald’s point, let’s share with 120 other sailors a 365 foot long living space in a sealed metal cylinder at 800 feet beneath the North Atlantic while chasing crazy Ivan away from Great Britain. 😉
I was lucky enough to commute straight through grad school, but remember friends’ rooms being exactly like this. More recently, I’ve seen the “cells” (if you can still call them that) of the local Dominican priory: private bath, phone, AC. I don’t have these things in my own house!