Living on campus is an important part of your college experience. Every residence hall at Illinois State has their own quirks that make them stand out from each other. Keep reading for things you only understand if you live in Watterson at Illinois State!
With around 2,000 people living between Watterson’s two towers, sharing 8 elevators may seem like more than enough but that is far from true. More than half of the year, at least 2-4 will be out of order at least twice a week. I can’t even remember the last time all 8 elevators worked at the same time. Also, some of the elevators will make noise that sound like cable snapping, that’s normal (apparently).
The absolute worse thing about living in Watterson has to be the trains. They are constantly going past and no matter what time it is, even during the most ungodly hours of the night, you better believe the conductor will be sitting in the train blowing that horn for a solid 2-3 minutes. People will tell you that you will get use to it, but I must highly disagree. If anything, it got worse as the year went on. They only seem to get louder and more frequent.
During the windiest times of the year, trying to get into Watterson is truly an absolute joke. Walking to the doors is challenging enough, but trying to get the doors open is a completely different story. I have witnessed super strong, macho guys struggle to open the doors so how to they expect a weak girl like me to pull that sucker open? Just a PSA, if you do not use all the strength in your entire body to keep those doors open, they will slam shut on you and give you a massive and painful bruise. I’m just speaking from experience.
As college kids, we already don’t have the motivation to get dressed. Since Watterson is directly connected to the dining commons, you will always see people walking around in their PJ’s. Especially in the winter, you will see girls walking around in T-shirts and athletic shorts. It’s nice that we don’t have to get bundled up just to get a bowl of cereal.
If I am being completely honestly, the amount of washers/dryers in the buildings is not sufficient enough for the amount of people that live there and the amount of laundry that is done on a daily basis in Watterson at Illinois State. Whenever you go to do your laundry, you will come to find a few machines that are broken. And once you find one that does work, you better keep an eye on your stuff and not forget about it because people will come by and take your clothes out and throw them somewhere where you might not be able to find them.
Watterson is complete trash when it comes to turning the A/C on and off. When the weather is hot and humid, you best believe that the A/C is most likely not on so you might as well turn your own fan on full blast. And in the winter, it’s just as hot and you can’t open the windows because it might cause the pipes to burst. And once springs rolls around, don’t expect them to turn the nice cool A/C on. Oh no, they won’t turn it on until everyone moves out unless everyone in both buildings calls the maintenance and complains. It’s been done multiple times, trust me. You will see people posting the number to the Facebook page and telling everyone to call and complain.
Specifically if you live on one of the top floors, but regardless, you have to go down all the stairs to the ground level. Nine times out of ten, its just a broken fire alarm, or something stupid so a lot of people tend to just stay in their rooms. I don’t recommend this just in case it is real! Also, you will probably get to experience this a few times throughout the year, but nothing is better than having to evacuate your room at 9 am in the middle of winter and all you have on is your PJ’s and a maybe a light jacket or sweater.
Move in is crazy no matter where you go, but since there are so many people in Watterson at Illinois State and only so many elevators to fit everyone and all their stuff, it gets backed up pretty quickly. You could easily spend up to an hour waiting just to get to an elevator. And move out is no better. I think I waited about 20 minutes for an elevator and each time they stopped on my floor, they were completely full and I lived on Marshall so I can’t even imagine what it was like for people that lived on Smith/Jefferson.
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