By Kelly Kim
Staff Writer
With temperatures from mid to high 90s, it has felt as though the College has found itself in the epicenter of the sun as the campus was trapped in a heat wave. Since conquering the heat wave, I have been consistently telling my roommate how you do not know what it is like to be humbled until you start sweating in places you never knew you could sweat before.
While everyone fantasizes about feeling the icy cold wind hitting their skin, no one dreams about being in a cold environment more than the freshmen residents living in Travers and Wolfe. Notoriously famous for having no air conditioning, students received their most humbling experience within the confines of their four walls, in sweltering heat. Every other day, you would see freshmen scurrying down the hallways, trying their best to rush to the showers to wash off the day’s parting gift of moisture, sweat and dirt.
Apart from the consistent complaints about the heat, students tried remedying their high body temperature by cooling off in the lounge, congregating with several other freshmen who were also cooling off. There was never a dull moment or empty chair at the lounge with people either occupying space to do their homework or simply getting some shut eye for a short moment, basking in whatever cold air they had left to savor before they would have to face the heat again.
“My sister on the seventh floor only slept two hours a day for the entire week,” said freshman undeclared major Ava Milsom.
The lack of sleep coupled with the already uncomfortable nature of Travers and Wolfe seems to be a recurring pattern.
Freshman finance major and Wolfe resident, Chris Scalafani, said that “[he] woke up and was literally sweating at 3 a.m.,” which seems to be a common experience amongst everyone in Travers and Wolfe during the heatwave.
A positive result that has seemed to come out of the heatwave is the fact that everyone and anyone could give an excuse to either not do anything or complain about just how much they hated being sweaty and hot. The bond that has formed amongst everyone because of the heat has now led to hopefully funny memories that will make a good story that everyone can look back on with fondness, another part of the “freshman experience.”
One of the more interesting stories that I have come across actually comes from my roommate, Aryanna Caronan, a class of 2027 undeclared major who towards the end of the week was sent to the hospital and was diagnosed with a headache and mild heat stroke. After sleeping in the dorm for five days at a steady 95 degrees, Aryanna began to feel a bit lightheaded and woozy, feeling the effects of the heat finally come to her as she was sent to the hospital to check on her condition. After it was concluded that she had a headache and a mild heat stroke, it was safe to say that she was going to be more careful with how much time she was going to spend in the dorm until the heatwave subsided.
Thankfully as we get deeper into the month of September with the sun setting sooner and the temperatures getting cooler, all indicators seem to point in the right direction. Now there will be less worries about any more potential heat waves as the weather slowly starts to cool down and give normal temperatures that everyone can enjoy.
