Dorm life at Kelly Hall: not so bad after all | The Triangle

Dorm life at Kelly Hall: not so bad after all

After having spent my freshman year living in the well-known Kelly Hall, I’ve had both good and bad experiences with Drexel University’s housing system.

Things started off rough for me because dorm life was something I was unaccustomed to, and quite frankly not excited about. Even before I arrived at the school I’d heard quite a lot about Kelly Hall’s reputation from some of its past residents, and the comments were not always flattering. However, I wasn’t expecting anything amazing since I was a freshman, and freshman dorms are generally the worst ones by default.

Kelly Hall wasn’t as terrible as people had led me to believe though. I’ll admit that the first few weeks were pretty rough in terms of cleanliness. There were a few times where housekeeping would take forever to get around to cleaning the bathroom. It was a brutal first couple of weeks because of this.

Things got better as time went on, and I feel as though this was partly due to myself and a number of the other freshmen settling in and figuring out what was expected from us as residents.

Quite a few fire alarm incidents happened during the first couple of weeks, some toilets flooded and there was an issue in the basement with the laundry room.

Yet, complaints aside, there are a number of great aspects to living in one of Drexel’s dorms, most notably, the residential staff members. The residential advisors in particular are people that I have heard nothing but good things about. To me, these people are invaluable because of what they do for the dorms.

I personally found both of the RAs I had during my time in Kelly Hall to be incredibly helpful. Without them, I undoubtedly would have had a much tougher time during fall quarter. Not only were they helpful within the dorm itself, but they were also walking encyclopedias when it came to campus and its many attractions.

The RAs were also the creators of a number of different activities and events that took place in Kelly Hall throughout all of fall quarter. These events were almost always interesting as their themes were generally based on things that were relevant to college life, such as drug and alcohol awareness. They were a nice distraction that the other residents and I could go to when we needed to take some time away from our studies and they also served as a good way to become familiar with other people that lived in the hall.

The various dorms that Drexel offers to its students all have their own ups and downs, but from an overall standpoint, I’ve heard mostly positive reviews from my fellow freshmen. Plenty of them have of course talked extremely negatively about the dorms, which is fine as everyone is entitled to their own opinion. For me personally, I think that the dorms are far better than a number of other college dorms that I have seen that have been far worse. I also wouldn’t expect a dorm like Kelly Hall to be absolutely perfect, because it’s hard to maintain a dorm when there are so many people living in it at a given time.

Drexel does a good job with its housing system, and what it offers to its students is definitely above average. It may be a little rough around the edges, but a bit of polishing is all it really needs.