By: Katie Dutton
When I think back on my first year at SNC, it really would not have been the same without the friends I made in Bergstrom Hall. Whether it was meeting one of my best friends just because she lived next door to me or creating a massive addiction to an online geography quiz website, it was a truly unique experience.
Committing to SNC, I knew that I would be in the Honors Program and working for the ALIVE team with the Emmaus Center, which focused on peer ministry in first year residence halls, so I felt that my experience would be rooted in these two groups and that they would help me to form connections and make lasting friendships. Even from the first day, when we broke into our Torch Groups and started a scavenger hunt around campus, I couldn’t help but be excited to meet the people around me. Insignificant though it may seem, I met one of my favorite people in the group as we wandered De Pere on that ridiculously hot August day, and that was only the beginning of the great people I would end up welcoming into my life.
My next door neighbor and I kept on seeing each other in the lounge, brushing our teeth, you name it, we seemed to be running into each other all the time. Soon, we realized just how much we had in common, from our older siblings to our love of Gilmore Girls. She became my close confidant as we went through our first year on campus, and I can hardly even count the hours of sleep we both lost as we spent our nights talking in the lounge. Soon, there was a whole group of us that congregated in the lounge on my floor, talking and laughing… definitely disrupting what were supposed to be Quiet Hours.
One of the funniest moments we had was when we all decided we would start using the quiz website JetPunk. This website mostly consists of geography quizzes, so we began by memorizing all the countries, which soon grew into memorizing all their capitals. Before long, common questions to be heard in the lounge would include “name countries that existed in the 12th century” or “what countries do you guys think have the highest GDP- no not Monaco, I already got that…”
While this may sound like exactly the kind of intellectual activity you might expect in the building we lovingly called “Nerdstrom,” it was more than that. These were things that were key to our bonding and actually helped shape our college experiences. Besides the fact that the massive amount of time spent on JetPunk led to back-to-back wins of Honors Trivia, they created the community we were all craving from college and we leaned into it as much as possible.
To dive deeper into our experience, it has to be pointed out all the experiences that we took advantage of. When I got to Bergstrom, I wasn’t sure who I would become in college, and the people around me showed me the way. My ALIVE mentor supported me as I planned gatherings each week to draw our hall closer as a community. My neighbor and I joined Residence Hall Association together, which we are now on the e-board of. My friend nominated me for student government and another ran with me to be on the Honors Student Advisory Board, a group we used to plan the first annual Bergstrom Superlatives.
That’s the craziest part of living in Bergstrom: the things that the people you meet can teach you. Sure, there are lots of stereotypes about living in an all-Honors dorm, and some of those are true– it’s not every day you meet people who will just ask you your high school GPA or randomly flex that they are a freshman with junior standing. But, on the other hand, it’s not every day you will be placed right into a community where the building itself is arranged in order to create community, where a simple knock or invitation to breakfast can lead to a lifelong friendship or a memory that you’ll laugh at in years to come.
And that’s what it comes down to: the friends we make along the way. Looking back on my time in Bergstrom Hall, I can’t imagine doing it any other way, with any other people. I’m forever grateful to have spent time in Bergstrom, and to the people who made my experience possible.
