My Dream House

I've lived in campus housing since my freshman year. My first year I lived in Santa Catalina - or FT as everyone calls it - with a ridiculous amount of people. I'd never had to share a bathroom before as I grew up an only child, and to go from that to sharing one with 4 other girls was a little bit painful. The room was small, and so was the bathroom, but we all bonded over it, and learned how to be tolerant and accommodating to each other's needs. I learned how to be more patient, and how to sleep in sometimes loud and bright conditions because of it, so in many ways living in FT helped me grow. It also enabled me to meet an insane amount of new people. There were hundreds of students in our building, living, studying, and hanging out with each other 24/7. It felt like one endless summer camp - except for midterms and finals week, where it felt a lot more like a funeral home.

It was towards the end of freshman year that I realized I wasn't going to live near all the friends I'd made during that time - they were all going to be moving into Isla Vista and getting houses together, and I was going to go back to campus housing. That was one of the first times I was ever disappointed to be an international student. Not because we can't live off-campus, but because I knew that the hassle of getting furniture to use for 3 years only, then to start a lease, figure out what to do with the furniture over summer and after graduation - I could never justify any of those choices to my parents, which meant I'd miss out on the quintessential Gaucho experience - living in Isla Vista with my friends.

For my 2nd year, I made peace with this fact. I started living in the campus apartments and realized they were actually really nice. And that even though I wasn't going to be living where I wanted to, I could still make the most of it and have fun. I made more wonderful friends and decided that I'd be just fine staying in the apartments until graduation. Now in the middle of my third year, it feels like someone somewhere listened to my desires and introduced me to the most wonderful people that I'm thankful to call my friends. They were able to convince and enable me to move into Isla Vista for my senior year. Although I realized that I don't need to live in a certain place to still have fun and remain connected with all of my friends, I'm extremely thankful and happy that I get to live the full experience of UCSB for at least some of my time at the school. 

I've always felt that the "true Gaucho" experience involved living in Isla Vista, dealing with bad tenants, and finding out your house has major structural issues in the middle of the quarter - while also living a short walk away from the beach surrounded by a community of other college students that are going through the exact same struggles as you are while managing to live in a house on their own for the first time. It's extremely stressful, but as an observer, it seems like an incredibly fun and humbling experience that shapes our student body. I've always wanted that experience, and as an international student who didn't want to struggle to find summer storage, buying furniture for 4 years only (etc.) I never thought I'd get to live it, yet here I am signing my first lease ever! I hope that over the next year I'm able to return to our blog and update everyone on whether moving into Isla Vista matched my expectations, so other students can be informed by my experiences to make their own housing decisions!