Taylor Place, thank you.
Two towers, 14 floors (but really 13), four elevators and over a thousand amazing individuals. As I reflect on my two years living here, I’m rather regretful that these will be my final few weeks in this dorm. In a month, I won’t be running down these hallways, or climbing the stairs to see friends. When I look back at what I did in college, this place will always hold a special place in my heart. But perhaps more than anything, it will be the people who lived here I will remember most.
Taylor Place is special in the way it forces you to be in community with other people. If you’re inherently shy like me, it gives you this freedom to not care, because we’re all forced to live so close together. You’re forced to be in elevators with people, you’re forced to wait in one of two lines at the dining hall together. You’re forced to stay within the two blocks of the dorm (more so because the entire campus is around five blocks long and two blocks wide). And if you’re going to be there, you might as well make the most of it, you might as well meet someone new or take up a conversation with a stranger.
Whether it was a 2 a.m. talk in the dark on the second floor terrace, or staring out at West Phoenix from the 14th floor crossway, Taylor Place had plenty of places to relax and reflect. If you’re a student of Taylor Place, you can probably laugh at a moment when you were in a room with not nearly enough seats. You know the anxious feeling of walking into Devil’s Greens to see if you were going to be eating that evening. You can probably remember getting frustrated with the card taker in the dining hall who asked for your receipt even though you were there not more than 10 minutes ago.
These are all the daily realities for Taylor Place students, but the opportunities that Taylor Place gave me to step out of my comfort zone were critical to any amount of my success. Coming from a graduating class of 39 students, I really had to take in stride the massive amount of students walking in and out of these two buildings every day. I’m sure many of my small-school colleagues can empathize with me on the change up.
Through it all, Taylor Place presented a sense of stability. Any college student knows we are living in some of the most unstable times of our life. One day we can be laughing until 4 a.m., and another day we’re drinking six Starbucks coffees, trying to finish a paper by midnight. Through all our triumphs and our losses, we still rode those same four elevators up and down and we always had friends that were just a wall apart.
As I walk these halls for the final time, I am reminded that our time is short and that we should be grateful. From my CA taking my "first day of college" picture to packing the final box, I consider myself blessed to have lived in this dorm and to have met so many incredible individuals. My advice for students is to take it all in right now, because you will never be in this kind of unique environment again. You’re never going to have the ability to meet 50 new people in a day, you’re never going to be able to wake up five minutes before class again (I have relied on that probably a bit too much).
So go out of your way to say hello to your neighbor eating in the dining hall or read a book on a floor terrace. Go play a new game in the SDFC, grab a milkshake with friends at Chik-Fil-A (R.I.P. Maroon and Gold dollars). Because whether we’re ready or not, we’re growing up. So thank you Taylor Place.
Related links:
ASU underclassmen shouldn't feel pressured to live in student housing
After a long wait, Palo Verde Main dorm gets an upgrade
Reach the columnist at jarwood@asu.edu or follow @jimsthebeast on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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