Dorm life

McMahon Hall

As I wandered across campus on one of my several walking routes this afternoon -- in 75 degree (24° C) springtime splendor -- I walked past eleven-story McMahon Hall.  McMahon's architectural style is described by Wikipedia as "brutalist," ordinarily meaning I wouldn't like it.  But I've always found the building attractive, ever since it was built in the mid 1960s. 

But then, it was my home for a number of years, while I worked on a second bachelor's degree and a master's.  It's part of my history.  I often feel -- and I today felt -- an urge to walk right in, as though I still belonged there.  As though I were still in my 20s. 

It's closed right now, of course, like the rest of the campus.  But still.

McMahon's design was excitingly new, when it was built.  Rather than having long halls with rooms on either side, it consists of a number of "clusters" on each floor.  Each cluster is a small U-shaped hallway that leaves the main hall and doubles back onto to it.  Within the cluster is a common room with a balcony, and, in most cases, four double rooms and a single.  The cluster has its own restroom, including showers.

You got to know your eight cluster mates well, and spent a lot of time hanging out in the common room together, reading, or talking, or playing games.  I believe our cluster was best distinguished for having placed a plastic palm tree out on the balcony, a tropical delight on which to warm our eyes during the long winters.  McMahon is built on a cliff overlooking a valley below.  The valley at present is occupied by a university golf course and a group of athletic buildings.  While I lived in McMahon, however, the valley was a land fill, and I could look up from my books and watch, hypnotized, the endless procession of garbage trucks bringing their cargo to the dump for dumping.  In the distance, the headlights of rush hour traffic, chronically stalled on the Evergreen Point bridge leading to Lake Washington's eastern shore, glowed angrily.

Those were good years, I realize now.  My isolation at present, hiding alone in my house from the novel coronavirus, causes me to be even more nostalgic than usual for times in the past when "the going was good."

Some people are only too happy not to recall their school years.  I'm not one of them.  If I had been British, I might have been one of those university students who end up never leaving the university, a life-time don, helping educate bright new students and forgetting that I was no longer one myself.

Partly, it was the ease of meeting people, and the kind of people I met.  My days as an undergraduate marked the first time I'd ever been surrounded by people my own age who knew a lot about a lot of things, things about which I knew nothing.  And who were intensely interested in whatever those things were.  The guy who ended up being my closest friend as an undergrad -- and eventually became a medical school professor -- was fanatically interested in, at the same time, Jussi Björling's singing of opera arias and Buddy Holly's singing of rock songs.  I'd never heard of either performer, but I soon learned to like opera and to at least respect the interest of others in certain types of rock -- unknowingly making myself more receptive to the great age of rock that arrived soon after graduation.

As sort of a corollary to the above, it was a revelation to realize that there was nothing wrong with reading books, with showing interest in obscure topics, with enjoying serious argument, with speculating for the fun of speculating, with not feeling compelled to share the interests of the herd.  Undergraduates, whether great students or just average, were all stretching their minds, opening up to new ideas.  Many came from prep schools, and the difference between prep school and college was, for them, one of degree.  For me, from a small town high school, it was a whole new world, and a whole new way of seeing myself in that world.

Also enviable, in retrospect, was the flexibility of my fellow students.  I look back wistfully, as I've mentioned in an earlier post, on how easy it was for someone to come by at midnight and say, hey let's drive off-campus and grab a burger.  And why not?  But, midnight!  I can't imagine someone now pounding on my door at midnight and suggesting we head for McDonalds.   Today, my night's sleep is well underway by that hour.  But I wish it weren't. 

In my undergraduate dorm, which may or may not have been typical, everyone played bridge, and there seemed to be almost always three players looking for a fourth.  I found this to be something of a return to my life as a games player in sixth grade and younger, but at a more complex and challenging level.  I played a lot of bridge.  I've hardly ever played it since graduation, but I look back on my temporary enthusiasm with fondness.  If I could find three players today, I'd probably waste my remaining years refining my bidding techniques --  which would make about as much sense as spending day after day of my dotage on the golf course.

But didn't I go to class, didn't I ever study?  Of course.  Frittering away my time would eventually have become depressing, if it hadn't been a way of occupying the interstices between the hours of bending over the books.  But it's very clear to me now that much of my education, especially at the undergraduate level, came from my dormitory experiences.  Being a shy introvert, I didn't always find it easy or natural being surrounded by often self-assertive dorm mates, but the experience was invaluable.  Much of education is self-education, and professors and texts are merely guides.  Sharing the enthusiasms of others for a field of study helps broaden your education beyond the requirements of your major.  It's not the only path to a broad education, obviously, but it's maybe the easiest.

In other words, I recommend living on campus to anyone who can swing it.

All of these memories -- prompted by walking past a beloved dorm that the UW is considering tearing down.  Why?  Apparently, because today's students want more amenities than can be found in that old reinforced concrete hulk.

It's a good dormitory and, in my opinion, an attractive one. I hope it remains in place, high on the edge of its cliff, for many years to come.