Personalising a Dorm Room

Some tips on personalising a dorm room...

• Add custom carpets. If your room has weird angles, The Perfect Rug makes custom-order rugs and they're delivered within a month. 
• Figure out your habits and tailor your spaces to them. I put my boot tray in front of my dresser for a month, until I got so annoyed that I couldn't pull out my drawers properly that I moved it behind my desk. On that note, get a boot tray - you'll need it for the winter and rainy season. 
• You can make plain surfaces more attractive by draping pashimas over them.
• Paper laterns are a great way to bring some personality into a room.
• Etsy, eBay and the Wisteria e-shop have a lot of funky furniture that you can order online. If you're looking for ideas for different pieces, you can also check out sites for small living spaces like Dwell and Apartment Therapy. Pintrest will also have a lot of posts in the home decor section. 

My friends Lhanzi and Alex taped up paper laterns to make the ceiling more colourful.

My funky bed-side table from Wisteria
and a vintage alarm clock from Etsy

A flexible standing lamp I ordered from Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Most of the girls on my floor have some variation of this lamp.

Faculty Spotlights

One of the tools that really helped me get to know Saint Michael's College better before deciding to visit was the spotlight archive. This online archive is filled with interviews with professors, current students and alumni so that you're able to get to know the specific departments and your future professors better. This also helped me choose which professors I wanted to meet with during my campus visit and I really recommend doing this because it'll help you get a better feel for the department you'll be involved with during your collegiate experience if you choose to come to SMC.

Here's what a faculty spotlight looks like - this is Professor Clary, the honors program coordinator and an English professor. The first time I chatted with him during my campus visit, we ended up talking for an hour and a half and then he gave me a comic strip. Meet with him when you visit!

Dude, where's my bus? - The CCTA and the SMC shuttle

For those of us who don't have a car (that is, all first-year students), the CCTA is our main mode of transportation - it's clean, free with the knightcard and runs generally at least every hour. The only catch is that it often doesn't come on time and it doesn't run on Sundays. Below is a full Mon-Sat schedule; note that we're stop #4 and if you're leaving from campus then you'll be looking at the 'Essex Junction to Burlington times'. The most convenient stop to get off at in Burlington is Church St., but there are a few stops around the area if you forget to get off.

Saint Michael's College bus stop

That's our bus!

Headed to Church Street

Also available is the SMC shuttle onto North Campus for upperclassmen who live in the Ethan Allen apartments, Hamel Hall, Purtill Hall, Linnehan Hall, Dupont Hall or need access to the Sloane Art Center, the Elley-Long Music Center, the Early Learning Center (for education majors) and the Herrouet Theater. There are also concerts at the Turtle Underground on weekends. The shuttle schedule is here. 

100 Tips for Life at Saint Mike's : 61 - 70

Here are 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50 and 51- 60. 


61. Generally, the registration process should be quite smooth (albeit a bit stressful). But take the extra step to confirm with your academic advisor that he/she has cleared you for registration. I've had two friends whose advisors have forgotten to do this and they had an extremely stressful first week back. That being said, if you don't get into some courses there are lots of good courses with extra space during the add/drop session - I chose two of my classes this way. 

62. The add/drop period is nine days long. Try to get everything done within the first few days, because you might need access to the course on eCollege in order to complete readings and coursework. Once you hand in the add/drop form to the registrar, your courses should show up on eCollege within a few hours. 

63. If you have wool sweaters that need to be hand-washed, you can put them in a 'woolens' cycle in the dorm washing machine which will wash it with cold water with a gentle spin. You can then hang it up to dry, and it won't get ruined. 

64. Go through your syllabi at the beginning of the semester and mark down all the major dates for homework, quizzes, projects, papers and exams that you have for the rest of the semester in your planner. It'll only take 10-15 minutes and you'll never be caught off-guard. It's really essential to see these deadlines and test days coming up; sometimes you'll have three major papers due in one week and you'll need to prepare yourself accordingly.

65. Eddie's Lounge is a great place to get work done on weekday mornings and it's not usually occupied on Friday nights if you want to watch a movie with friends in a larger space.

66. If you pull on a door handle too quickly after swiping your Knightcard, it won't let you in and you'll have to wait around 30 seconds until you can re-swipe.

67. The college health centre is currently unable to prescribe pills for women for birth control reasons, but they will prescribe it for health reasons or refer women to other clinics.

68. If you lose your Knight card (and somebody finds it) or you lock yourself out, you'll normally have to go to the Student Life office on the first floor of Alliot.

69. It's really important to check with your academic advisor if your academic plan is feasible. They'll let you know, for example, that students are not able to double major in Psychology and Education because there are too many overlapping courses. But they can also provide you with alternatives like self-designing a major or fulfilling certain courses abroad or during the summer.

70. Students are able to submit writing pieces for three publications: The Holy Shift (the social justice magazine), The Onion River Review (the literary journal) and The Defender (the news publication).