Walking to Ross Dining Hall today, my first day returning from spring break, my boots were coated with a nice thick helping of what felt almost like primordial mud. Wading through the swamp like land of Battell Beach, I stared down at my shoes to notice the salt stains which serve as Vermont winter tattoos for your footwear—ironically leaving the texture and color of a sun bleach—replaced by the inevitable padded mud that hugged to the bottom of my feet.  At that moment I knew it was spring at Midd and therefore time for room draw.

Today the campus is a buzz with the release of housing numbers for the upcoming draw in mid-April. As a graduating senior who has only been through the lottery process once, I am a  little more divorced from the sentiment that most people are currently experiencing. I’ve only had to move through room draw during my freshman year for sophomore draw but that was a little more lowkey as my friends and I knew we would all be living in Coffrin–the Atwater sophomore housing–either way. I slipped through my junior and senior housing draw as I’ve been part of residential life for the last two years. From my point pint of view, housing thus seems easy and fun, which I believe most people would somewhat agree with. It is a time individuals have the privilege to choose their own roommates and hallmates which allows for development of new intentional living spaces. For sophomores, individuals will live with the same individuals that were in their freshman dorm but can shape their halls. As I am in Atwater, I moved from Allen Hall my freshman year to Coffrin where I lived in an adjoining single with a roommate. Normally during housing draw for junior year, individuals choose to live in a self-conceived special interest house that attempts to engage with the broader Middlebury community.  In the past, some examples have been Vermont Foods, Creative Design, and Spontaneous homes. Individuals also tend to move into Language houses in which residents take a pledge to only speak in the language in order to expand colloquial vocabulary and prepare for junior abroad experiences. During senior year, there is usually a buzz around campus to get a hold of the most coveted senior housing complexes that range from an Atwater Suite, Beach House (a 3 person home) or Porter House (a larger 10 person building). Overall, it brings people together to really start contemplating the realities of next year and is a great way to invite students across campus to start setting personal goals for the coming semester.