Eloise Taylor

French Hall Dorm Tour!

Incoming first-year students at Dartmouth complete a housing survey and then are sorted into one of six housing communities, which determine what dorm hall you'll be living in. In the summer, I was randomly assigned to the West House housing community.

This year, West House first-years are separated across three dorm buildings: Russell Sage, French Hall, and Judge Hall. French and Judge are what students consider the River Cluster, because both buildings are located next to the Connecticut River.

French Hall has four floors and a basement with a combination of dorm types, like singles, two-room doubles, and three-room doubles. I was lucky enough to get a three-room double! This means that my roommate and I get our own rooms plus an additional room to be used for studying or socializing. 

My dorm's common room!

My roommate and I decided to move our desks into our individual rooms so we could make the extra room a common room and proper hang-out space!

We furnished the room with a futon, coffee table, and a TV, perfect for hosting movie nights! The beauty of French is that most people hang out in the building, so having a common room in our own dorm gives us great space to be together.

Our walls are also filled with memories from the year! We have a West House pennant, stickers, photos, drawings, and so much more hanging up.

One wall is even covered in polaroids of all the people who live in French Hall. Every time someone new enters our room, we take a Polaroid of them and make them sign it. We then hang it up in the order of where they live in French Hall. At the end of the year, we're going to give everyone their polaroid back, so they have a memory from their first year at Dartmouth.

We also have decorations from the different events we've thrown, like birthday parties! Just a few weeks ago, I threw a Saturday Night Live watch party for when Timothee Chalamet hosted because one of my friends loves him. If you look closely at the pictures, you can see a lot of Timothee Chalamet pictures and signs!

Our futon!

Besides the common room, there are two additional rooms, which we use as our individual bedrooms. In my room, I have my wardrobe, my desk, a bookshelf, and my bed. 

I love my room! It's a really great size for a dorm room, and I have a lot of privacy. I have a lot of posters and trinkets in my room that I've collected over the term, like postcards, ticket stubs, and a bunch of photographs. 

In my opinion,  the best part of living French is its access to the outside. I love looking out my window and seeing the trees change through the seasons. I watched them turn from green to orange and brown and now I get to see them covered in snow. This term, I even built a snowman in the backyard of French Hall!

My own room!

I've loved my first-year dorm so much! So many memories and friendships have been made here! I can't wait to see all the memories I make in it in the spring!