Living in an all-freshman dorm is the best and worst thing that will ever happen to you. It’s summer camp with booze and video games and friends with benefits; it’s boarding school with a few hundred extra rules and regulations, plus an RF governess and a crusty old Dean, ruining all your fun. You’ll make close friends, fellow students as young and confused and excited as you; you’ll get trapped in the hermetically sealed funhouse, a bubble within a bubble. Freshmen from four-class dorms know more people from more parts of campus, but only because four-class dorms define boredom. None of them have the kind of memories we made in Larkin.

Larkin 2003-2004 was a very particular time and place, like ‘60s San Francisco or the Weimar Republic — often ecstatic, occasionally tragic, sometimes boring, always memorable.

There was enough vomit to fill a vomitorium from the late decadent decline of the Roman Empire. Important lesson, kids: When you’re running into the bathroom in the middle of a Power Hour to boot and rally, it’s better to projectile all over the floor than anywhere near the sink. The floor can be cleaned, by you, in the morning. Sinks have pipes that need clearing by poorly-paid janitors who really have better ways to spend their lives. Not all the regurgitation was alcohol-related; the girls’ bathroom got clogged with body image issues

But the best things about the freshman dorm, the stuff that lasts forever, are just feelings you get, in quiet moments, when the past feels close. I can remember waking up on a Sunday afternoon on my futon — I’d been too lazy to climb into bed the night before. Some other people slouched into our room. There was no thought of doing anything useful — our bodies and souls were wrecked from a week of weekends. Someone suggested we pop in a movie. The girl from down the hall had never seen “Scarface.” My roommate and I both had the DVD — we were young men, and this was 2004. We watched the movie, some of us typing on our laptops, all of us lying splayed out across the futon and the floor. From down the hall you could hear the guys playing HALO and NFL Street. The spring sun came in through the window. It could have been any hour of the day. I didn’t feel tired, and I didn’t want to move.

Someone on the inside told me that ResEd — the few staff members left from those days who haven’t quit or gotten sacked — generally refers to our year’s Larkin as the worst freshman dorm in history...

...Proving they don’t know anything about freshmen, dorms or history.