Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Finally Someone Does Some Real College Prep! From WSJ.

Siobhan Spiak and Katie Harada have spent months discussing in painstaking detail the décor of the 185-square-foot dorm room they will share this fall at American University in Washington, D.C.

Together, they envision a bohemian theme: walls painted robin's-egg blue, floor-length mosaic-print curtains, large plush pillows, tribal-print tapestries and strings of hanging Christmas lights. They plan to use soft lighting and touchable fabrics in purples, blues and greens. Ms. Spiak wants to buy a four-poster canopy bed.

More college students are decking out their dorm rooms with the stylish décor and the latest electronics. As Sanette Tanaka explains on Lunch Break, this desire for personalized space has prompted retailers to offer more services. Photo: Brandon Sullivan for The Wall Street Journal.

"The dorm itself is already so drab," says Ms. Harada, who is from Basking Ridge, N.J. "We want to make it more exciting since we will be there for eight months."

For inspiration, they've turned to social media: Ms. Harada browses Tumblr pages, while Ms. Spiak, who lives in Phoenix, adds pictures to her Pinterest board.

The roommates, Ms. Spiak says, disagreed on only one thing. "There was a rug that Katie showed me that I just didn't like at all," she says. "To me, it looks like a bath mat, and that's what I told her. Luckily, she agreed."

College students are increasingly decking out stark dorm rooms with designer-quality décor and the latest consumer electronics. Social media, design apps and shopping sites have been driving the transformations, making it easier to share ideas and make purchases with roommates from afar. Target's new uStyler online tool, for example, lets students create their own virtual room and share it via Facebook, Pinterest or email.


The Rest of the Misery.





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9 comments:

  1. Because you know that is like SO important.

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  2. I just hope they have money left over to buy books. I expect they will; this story is about the ever-dwindling minority of privileged students who are lucky enough to have a traditional, residential college experience, with time to concentrate on their studies (or, if they choose, decorating and socializing instead). Most students are working too many hours (and taking out too many loans) just to pay tuition. I just wish the opportunity were more fairly distributed, so that students who, given the time, would read the course catalog on the beach in August (one of my happier pre-freshman year memories; yes, I'm a nerd) were the ones who got the time, and the ones who are going to focus on decorating and socializing end up waiting tables, working retail, etc., etc.*

    *To be fair, the two groups aren't mutually exclusive. Making plans to decorate a dorm room can be one way to deal with the anxieties of leaving home, entering a new academic environment (which will remain mysterious until classes start), etc., etc. Still, the various ways in which the "college experience" is being "upsold" by any industry than get its hooks into a remotely related corner, combined with the reality of most students' financial situations, is maddening.

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  3. Words cannot express my hatred of these women and the jerks who market to them.

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  4. I thought I was being fancy when I picked out a pair of clearance throw pillows for the couch in my current apartment...

    Oh, and Pinterest? Ugh. Not that I have no interest in clothes and shoes and desserts and whatnot... but when I look at that site it screams "I HAVE SUCH GOOD TASTE LOOK AT THIS THING I LIKE PLEASE TELL ME YOU LIKE IT TOO"

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  5. They can't even decide on decor without Facebook etc. I came up with black all on my own!

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  6. They can't even decide on decor without Facebook etc. I came up with black all on my own!

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  7. Since when can you paint a dorm room? I spent a lot longer living in apartments than I ever did in dorms, and none of them would let me paint.

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  8. I met my roommate the weekend I moved into the dorm. We couldn't paint the room or hang anything on the walls. Furniture consisted of 2 beds, 2 desks, and there were some drawers in the small closet. No room for anything else, though I squeezed in a rented upright piano (I was also studying art & music). No TV in our room or in the dorm. I did have a plastic record player.

    And somehow it didn't scar me for life.

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  9. What the fuck ever happened to just hanging posters on the damn wall? At orientation just now we had some snowflake-parent complaining about the "outdated" dorm room furniture.

    For the Good Lord's sake, people, of course it's scarred. It's still serviceable, isn't it? Put up some posters of war kittens or cute race cars or Optimus Prime or something, to cover the gouges, and get on with college life.

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