Communal bathrooms. Annoying roommates. Limited personal space.

There are plenty of less-than-stellar experiences you could encounter when living in a dorm, but some first-year students are attempting to cozy-ify their rooms with decorations and a little bit of creativity.

“I was just going for somewhere I wanted to live in,” Medill first-year Meryl Li said. “I'll be in this college dorm for a while – for a whole year, so I really wanted a place that I could feel at home in.”

Li’s roommate, Medill first-year Adelle Johnson, said they both prioritized memories of loved ones and friends with pictures and mementos from home.

“I would describe [our dorm] as surprisingly cohesive because we didn't plan it at all,” Johnson said. “It just happened to be what we chose and kind of came together nicely. And I would describe it as very cozy.”

Weinberg first-year Sofia Papadopoulos said she likes cute aesthetics and wanted her dorm to feel like it did at home.

“Everything here is just decorations from my old room that I just repurposed here,” Papadopoulos said. “I tried getting as much fake plants as possible because they can fill up the space very quickly. And yeah, I like green a lot, so I put a lot of green. I just wanted it to look like a forest puked in my room.”

For Papadopoulos, though, it’s not just about how her dorm looks - it’s about how it makes her feel.

“Honestly, I'm a very aesthetically driven person,” Papadopoulos said. “So, if I feel good in the environment I'm in, I'll do good in it.”