Many underclassmen find themselves left in their dorms until mid-December and are forced to play catch-up as far as getting into the Christmas spirit once arriving back home.
How much Christmas cheer freshmen are putting into their dorms this year varies from person to person, but distance from home seems to sometimes be a factor. Those who live closer are usually less interested in decking their halls.
Noah Meisner, a freshman in the College of Engineering, said that he feels no need to decorate for Christmas in his dorm room. He has no Christmas decorations, and has no plans to obtain any before returning back home to a suburb of Chicago in mid-December.
Annie Ernst, a freshman in the College of Nursing from Illinois, said that she believes there is no correlation between how far someone lives from home and how much they feel the need to decorate or prepare for Christmas.
“I don’t really care about decorating, but I know my other roommates do, and two of them live roughly as far from home as I do,” Ernst said. “It just depends on how much effort you want to put into it.”
Elizabeth Killian, a freshman in the College of Education, had a different take on preparing for Christmas. Killian lives fifteen hours from her home in Long Island, New York. In her dorm room, she has lights strung up bordering the ceiling and a miniature Christmas tree as well.
Killian said she feels that her Christmas decorations make the room feel much more like home and help her to get into the Christmas spirit before heading back to New York. Killian said that her roommate, Caroline Norton, a freshman in the College of Communication, is from Alabama, and therefore she also appreciates the effort to get into holiday mode before going back home.
Killian said that having the tree and the lights in her dorm for almost a full month before returning home leaves her happy and “ready to take on the season” upon her arrival in New York.
Aside from individual students, residence halls as a whole and by floors are taking on Christmas in their own ways. McCormick Hall CPC has organized a winter clothing drive. Some floors are filled with decorations, and Marquette is promoting service opportunities, enabling students to have a well-rounded Christmas in as many or few doses as they choose.
