How I know my room is in a college dormitory

One morning this week, instead of working on my papers, projects and exam-studying, I found myself staring at objects around my common room. Though the room is certainly no replica of a Blutoesque Delta House taproom, I was struck by how distinctly "college" it looks.

Take, for example, the mantel above our fireplace, which offers visitors in search of sustenance two options: Hershey's chocolate syrup and Gordon's Dry Gin. Sounds like breakfast to me! Oh, and if you aren't a fan of chocolate gin, we offer a wide selection of Natty Light, Bud Light, Andre's champagne and rotten whole milk: date of expiration-Feb. 16. Yum.

We have two couches in our room. Only one is visible. The other is submerged in a four-foot avalanche of books, magazines and, as of late, tuxedo remnants from last weekend's festivities. Every once in a while, when additional seating is required (usually so we can watch "24" and throw stuff at the TV when President Logan does something stupid), the avalanche is tossed on the floor temporarily.

On one wall, there is the ever-so-harmonious juxtaposition of a poster of the Dalai Lama and the infamous "Teamwork: There Is No I In Drunk" poster. Apparently, our intellectual interests blend well with the aforementioned beverage selection. On another wall, there is a poster of Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio swinging for the fences four feet away from a Boston Red Sox pennant and a poster of Fenway Park. This rivalry has been the source of several roommate near-brawls since freshman year.

Our bedrooms are perhaps the most rife with college-esque indicators. For one, out of the four beds in our room, only three have bed sheets. According to one of my roommates, "Sheets are for pussies." Also, the mound of clothes on my floor next to my closet prompted an appalled fire inspector (who had just fined us) to gawk, "Son, did your closet just throw up?" It just might have.

We cut corners in every possible way to make our room that much more college-esque. We don't drink out of glasses. We use solo cups. We didn't put our dates' flowers in vases before Houseparties. We used Nalgenes and Gatorade bottles. We stir protein shakes with pens and the backs of our toothbrushes because we don't have spoons. We don't use tissues. We steal paper towel rolls from the bathroom. We have gone through an entire year without a mirror in our room. We look at our reflections on our triple glossed Beirut table that shines ever so wonderfully.

I'm sure some of my readers have begun to vomit (like my closet) at the seemingly pig-style lives that my roommates and I live. To these folks, I will devote a few sentences ameliorating the grotesque picture I have painted. Firstly, our walls are still white. This may not sound like a big deal, but the beer-soaked, marker-covered walls I saw in one quad on campus were definitely not white. For all the clothes that cover our floors, there is no dust. Our room usually smells normal. According to the Princeton Scale of Relative Aromas, this means that our room's smell rests somewhere in between the scent of Prospect Garden and the stench of TI's taproom.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and our room is beautiful. Come check it out sometime. My parents will be visiting for Mother's Day (let this be a friendly reminder that Mother's Day is on Sunday), so I'll be doing some cleaning. And if you do stop by, don't be surprised if you see the flowers I bought for my mom chilling in a Nalgene. Neel Gehani is an ORFE major from Summit, N.J. He can be reached at ngehani@princeton.edu.