Emily's Siena Blog!

Good question!

Make sure you communicate with your roommate over the summer. Creep on over to Facebook and see if you can look them up there. If not, there’s always the phone number listed on the email with your roommate information - it may be a bit nerve-wracking, but it will help. A lot.

See if you two have anything in common. If you’re worried that you may not, see if you can gauge anything from their Facebook profile. If you find things in common, great! If not, that’s not as fun, but that doesn’t mean you need to have a bad relationship with your roommate.

Also, organizing things to bring with your roommate will help break the ice. Should you guys get a microfridge? Should one person bring a DVD player, and the other a TV? Does your roommate maybe have a rug to put down? Will someone need room for a game console?

Finally, set some guidelines for both you and your roommate to abide by. For example, your roommate may like to study in the room. Make sure you aren’t blasting obnoxious music or something while he or she is trying to do that. Also, you might like going to bed early, so see if you can set a time for loud electronics and main lights to get turned off.

Be sure to set some rules about visitors, too. Many people see their dorm rooms as a way to escape the bustling college scene. It won’t be really pleasant for anyone if you’re having a bad day and want to get away from it all only to come back to find your roommate getting lucky with his or her significant other.

Be open to communication with your roommate, and be pleasant. Adjusting to college is really hard by itself, but learning to live with a stranger is one of the worst things. Remember, your roommate is dealing with the apprehension you are. Make it easy for both of you. :)

Technically, I think you will need to leave campus. However, take a look through the orientation schedule. On some nights, the events don’t end until after 11:30. You’ll be driving home pretty late.

On the other hand, if you wish to spend the night with a friend, you should have them look into registering you as a guest after reading the visitation guidelines, which state:

Commuter students visiting the residence halls are considered visitors and therefore must abide by the visitation policy. Commuter students visiting the residence halls with non-students (guests) are required to register their guests.

It’s a bit of a bummer, yeah. But that’s probably a better way for you to make friends instead of going home and coming back the next day (though possibly not by much).

Just make sure your friend’s new roommate is okay with you staying the night! Everyone will be stressed out from orientation and meeting new people, so just be kind… they’ll be letting a stranger crash in their new room.

Parties? Uh, I totally don’t know what you mean. I stay in my room and study all the time. I uphold Franciscan values. You know. Stuff. ;)

As a representative of the school, I can’t tell you about any wild, raging parties that go on here. But what I can tell you is that there are parties at any college. If you ask around when you get here, you’ll find out. (That being said, don’t go to any parties that are advertised on Facebook. It’s just not a good idea because it’s usually upperclassmen who want to feast on the blood of   take advantage of freshmen.)

Just please use common sense if/when you attend a party, be it at Siena or U Albany. There’s a new rule at Siena that says if you’re even in the same room as alcohol and you’re underage then there will be trouble.

That being said, there are also plenty of parties to go to without alcohol that are just as fun. You’ll just have to know the right people.

Second, while I’m not too familiar with the HEOP program myself, there’s a lot of information available on the Siena website. You may find it to be of some help.

Lastly, college is SO different from high school. College is like living in a little town with all your friends. You also take fewer classes than you did in high school, so there’s much more time to focus on keeping up with classes in addition to socializing and sleeping.

There’s so much independence when you’re away at school, but I feel obligated to remind you that there’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it. Use your common sense and there’s no way you can do poorly. The only way to go is up :)

You are going to love college. Enjoy it while it lasts.

1) The lighting is horrible at night, but wonderful during the day. I’d reccommend at least one desk lamp (although one for your bedside table would be helpful, too), but a floor lamp would really do wonders. The only lights in there are near the door and are very dim. Also, make sure you don’t bring halogen lamps. Siena doesn’t like students having them because they might explode.

2) Not at all. You get a tall dresser with maybe five drawers, all of which are big and deep. The dresser is awkwardly shaped, though. It’s a complete square, so you’re pretty far from the mirror (which makes putting in contacts/otherwise getting ready a nightmare!). (Off-topic, but I’d also recommend a mirror like below, if you’re a girl. It may not be manly enough for men. I wouldn’t know. Sorry! haha)

Closet space is great, too. If you’re looking to get one of those hanging storage organizers for your closet, it may not be something you’ll need. There’s plenty of drawer space to use in the dresser.

The only awkward thing about the closet is that it looks like this:

So, it’s a little awkward to get into.

3) Here’s a quick comparison of a bed without risers and a bed with them:

It gives you about a foot of height to fit more under the bed.

:)

I used bed risers, and I can’t be a bigger fan of them.

You won’t necessarily need bed risers if you already have storage like this:

You can probably fit one or two of these containers under a bed without risers. The thing is, I wouldn’t recommend bringing a container like this. I brought one with me to school last year - it was horribly awkward to carry and open without moving it out from under the bed. I felt bad for the saint who carried that in for us.

But there’s no doubt that you’ll have more storage room if you get risers. You’ll be able to fit this kind of container:

If you have risers, there’s room for three or four of those purple containers (although I don’t even think I had enough stuff to store in that many containers. I had one of these which I kept tea, canned soup, and other food in). If you have a laundry bag, you could fit that under the bed too.  My friend Dustin was able to fit a mini fridge under his bed with risers (but not a micro-fridge, which is a microwave on top of a fridge, the only kind of microwave Siena allows).

I rambled a little bit in this one, but I hope it helped you! :D

The psych classes are great! There are a lot of interesting ones, but they always fill up really quickly during registration. If you can get into one, you’re in luck. (I took general psych - it was really interesting. :D )

The only negative things I think I can say are the size of the school and the selection of majors. If you’re not that into being a part of a small community and there isn’t a major that you’re interested in here, you might end up being pretty miserable.

Also, depending on where you live could be pretty bad. I could see the entrance to my building from my dorm room. It was pretty cool except for the loud partiers every weekend. My boyfriend’s room was right outside the Horseshoe (a big taxi pick up area) and that was really loud on the weekends, too. Public Safety does as much as it can to keep them quiet, though.

For an extraordinarily late answer to the question about the size of the rooms… before I left, I wasn’t able to get photos of triples or doubles, but I was able to snap a shot of my own room right as I was moving out.

This is the usual size of a double. This one was in Ryan Hall. If you end up being a triple, it’ll probably be in this size of a room your freshman year. :( haha. They try to de-triple as quickly as possible, like when people move out, but they may be unable to.

The Quads in Ryan are roughly double this size and fit four people. There are very few Quads in Ryan. If I remember correctly, there is one on the third floor and one on the first floor next to the lounge.

I live in a double. :D I’ll get on the pictures ASAP.

I didn’t, but I’m not entirely sure. If you took any AP credits in high school that transfer, they’ll probably place you accordingly if you choose the option to have an academic advisor make your schedule for your first semester of freshman year. (Even if they make your schedule, you’re welcome to make changes to it afterward if it’s not to your liking.)

Not at all! A lot of people here aren’t Catholic (or religious, even). It is required that you take a Religion class, though, but they’re all historical and not faith based. There’s no pressure at all, it’s just a welcoming environment. There aren’t any forced prayers, if that’s what you’re wondering.