Nathaniel Sloan '08.5
I've lived at Preston Street, and currently I live on John Street. It's been the perfect experience in both cases. It's an opportunity to feel, at least fractionally, more like a real person. It feels good to be responsible and not have some faceless janitor cleaning your bathroom. You have some sort of responsibility for yourself that the dorms don't give you.
There haven't been any negative aspects that I wouldn't have had in any living situation. The mice - I react like a little girl to the mice. I scream and I go under the covers and it's pretty shameful.
Our landlords have been altogether accessible. Our landlord on Preston was actually a sound engineer who claims to have worked with the Jackson 5, but Google search hasn't turned up anything. He also promised us that our band would have one of its songs played as instrumental music during the FX show "The Field," which never seemed to turn into reality.
I think by far the biggest challenge is the summer sublet situation. Most leases start in June, so if you're not here in the summer it can be an unwanted to challenge to have to find a subletter. We sort of had an impulse buy with our apartment, which we later realized doesn't have one 90 degree angle in the entire two floors. You walk uphill to the living room. You have to scale the heights.
Sejal Jhaveri '09
I wanted to live off campus because I lived in a house over the summer with a couple friends, and it was an awesome experience. I was so ready to be out of the dorms and off campus.
My experience this far has been pretty mixed. It's been kind of hard finding a place. We have a couple of leads right now that we're looking into but as of now I don't have a definite place.
I've met a couple landlords who just seemed really mean and didn't want to deal with students, so I don't know why they're trying to rent to students. I've had a couple that have been fantastic. They're like "We know we're dealing with students renters, we'll do everything we can to work with you if you have any problems."
John Molina '08
My experience living off campus has been going well. It's a different environment.
I feel quasi-adult-like cooking four nights a week with a bunch of guys. People seem to be really impressed when we show up to Sam's Club and buy fruits and stuff like that. Since it's Brown off-campus housing-it's very convenient. They kind of take care of everything.
This is my first year off campus. I would recommend it to seniors-it gives you a different perspective.
Serena Dollive '08
I like living off campus a lot. I feel there's a lot more independence, although you sometimes do miss living in a dorm room.
I live in a Brown-owned apartment on the corner of Thayer and Bowen. Brown has been pretty responsive with all the repairs. A stove exploded and they cleaned up the place pretty quickly. The exception is heating, but a lot of buildings around campus are having heating problems, so we're in the queue.
Compared to most of my friends, off campus the maintenance is much better (in Brown -owned apartments) from what I've experienced. But the rent is a lot higher, so it's kind of a trade-off. We kind of got the apartment as a spur of the moment thing. I'm happy to be living off campus. The apartment itself is much bigger than, say, a normal suite in Young O.
