Dormitory, Sweet Dormitory
by Austin Olive '03, published in the Alumni Magazine

Late one Thursday night, while I was beating out a King Lear essay, an underformer who lived on my hall barged into my room and, in a fit of typical Woodberry dorm life, started to sing what I guessed to be an Elvis song.

“Get the hell out of here,” I yelled at the boy. “You’re stuck!” Without saying a word, the underformer left the room and I did my best to get back to the essay at hand. The next morning, still half asleep and waiting for the shower, I apologized to the boy. I started to explain more, but he quickly cut me off.

“It’s okay,” he told me. “I understand.” The purpose of this anecdote is not to illustrate the hostility between dormmates. Before this incident, the underformer and I said very little to one another. Now, however, we speak on a regular basis. No, the purpose of this story is to explain how it is we live in a residence hall with twenty other boys our age, who all share a common television and bathroom.

Of all the things I am told that I will take with me when I graduate, friendship is the one I hear repeated most often. Alumni, whether they are from the class of 1995 or 1935, frequently know where their roommate is living, or what one of their old teammates is doing. It’s quite rare, in fact, when this doesn’t happen. This past fall, my last one to be spent on campus as a Woodberry student, I began to think about these friendships, wondering if, fifty years later, I would still be in touch with my roommate or one of my teammates. I wondered whom I would know from my class and what would become of the relationships I had cultivated during my three years here. Then I thought deeper into the subject. I wondered how such lasting friendships are formed and what it was—not just at Woodberry but anywhere—that would cause people’s lives to become so close. In life, or more appropriately in a boy’s young and impressionable life, few experiences compare to time spent in a dorm situation, and I’m convinced that it is during this time spent on dorm, this fraction of the four, three, or two short years, that our lives grow so close together and in a manner that lasts until our graves.

During Christmas break, while sharing a bathroom with my sister, I became annoyed by the way she let her things spill across the counter. I told her to move them, that she needed to be more considerate and learn to live with others.

“For the past two years I’ve roomed with four other girls. I think I know something about living together,” she told me. I told her that for the past three years I have lived with twenty other guys and one bathroom. I told her I knew more. Three years on a dorm has taught me consideration beyond imagining. If I ever had any personal habit that could irk someone, I now know about it. I have beat on walls to have music turned down, and I have had my walls beaten on to tell me to be quiet. What I have learned in the classroom is a small part of all that I have learned during my Woodberry education. In fact, I would say what I have learned on dorm while interacting with others is more important than what I have been taught in a classroom, mainly because this “dorm education” was never meant to be taught. It’s simply intrinsic to our lifestyle and the closeness that we exist in. No textbook can teach someone to be a neighbor; only experience can, and anyone who has attended Woodberry has that experience. Yet this is only a part of it. My consideration for others, my ability to keep a neat room, my ability to know when a floor needs to be vacuumed, all of these are the superficial side of dorm life.

Before Woodberry and even while I had to share a bathroom with my sister, I had a room to myself. It was my room, and no one else’s, and it would stay that way forever and ever. During the good times I would leave that room and interact with my family and friends, I would go to school and out on the weekends. But during the bad times I would retreat to it. I could cower in there, in my own bed, in my own space. From whatever caused me harm or angst, I was able to shield myself. I had a degree of separation. What makes living as we do at Woodberry so hard is the absence of that degree of separation. Even though a student may ignore his sadness concerning a personal disappointment, or his anger, contempt, or stress during a particularly bad day, indicators flash on and suddenly everyone knows that someone is not doing well. It’s awkward at first, and disheartening, to allow others this glimpse at you and at what is bothering you. I felt weak when this first happened to me, when I was homesick my sophomore year, and I felt weak again when I cursed and yelled at the underformer for trying to be funny. I felt weak because I showed weakness. However as hard as this is to do, we soon realize that we are not the only ones being run through the wringer. Everyone else is having just as hard as time as you are, and because of this there is a common sympathy and a common misery, and during those times of sympathy and misery, friendships that last until the grave are formed.

Senator John McCain, a graduate of Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, attributes his own dorm-life experience to surviving a prison camp during the Vietnam conflict. This is not to say that Woodberry or any other boarding school is a prison camp; however the feelings of weakness, self-doubt, and hardship are comparable.

After apologizing to that underformer early one morning and before he could reply, I knew there were no hard feelings. He “understood.” This much, I realized. And it is this ineffable understanding of our common misery and sympathy which makes our lives as Woodberry graduates and as friends that much sweeter and that much richer.