5 Things You’ll Only Understand If You Live In DaSilva At SJU

Let me start off by saying that DaSilva Hall is the best, and I am so happy I got to live there during my first year. So if you’re picking housing, pick DaSilva if you can. I want to make it clear that the following points might only apply to my class but I have a feeling that’s not how it’ll work out. If you’ve already lived in DaSilva at SJU, you know how great, but weird it is to live there. I hope you’ll agree with most of the things I’m about to put down.

So every housing building at SJU kinda has its own personality, especially as you get older. In freshman year, obviously, the incoming class sets the personalities for their buildings. Generally, freshmen live in DaSilva, Hollis and Donovan as well as St. Vinny’s and then the one’s sprinkled in sophomore housing. But there are some things that only those who have lived in DaSilva understand.

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1. The printing station struggle.

So, there are printing stations all over the school. The library, Monty’s, DAC, Marillac and the upperclassmen buildings. In 2016, Hollis and Donovan got printing stations and DaSilva did not. Nothing has ever hurt as much as that did. You won’t know the pain until you’re frantically running around the school looking for a working printing station two minutes before your class or realizing at 8 PM that you have a worksheet due the next day and you have to print it out to do it.

2. Unspoken competition with Hollis.

I don’t know how or why it started, all I know is that Hollis and DaSilva at SJU are in an unspoken competition. It’s not something that goes on all the time either, just when one of us has a fire drill the other is unbelievably amused to the point where you can hear the whole other building cheer as you stand in the cold in your cheeky PJ shorts. I won’t deny, when Hollis has a drill, especially late at night, I am unbelievably happy. I can’t really say why, it’s just fun. Good, friendly fun though. No real animosity at all.

3. The importance of a common room.

DaSilva has the BEST rooms. Well, in the freshman buildings. The suites are like mini apartments and they’re very spacious unlike Donovan and St. Vinny’s where it’s just two bedrooms separated by a shared bathroom. Hollis has common rooms in the suites too but the rooms are much smaller. When you visit your friends you really start to appreciate having that extra space to just chill and host your friends if you feel like it. Plus you have a nice comfortable, neutral place to get to know the people you’re sharing your suite with as opposed to awkwardly bumping into them in your shared bathroom in the morning.

4. Incessant fire drills.

I swear no building has as many fire drills as DaSilva at SJU, we once had about three go off in an hour. They always happen at the worst times too, 3 in the morning, when it’s raining outside, when it’s just too cold to not be in bed, when you’re in the shower. The best part is that only three of the million fire drills we had were actual drills and the rest were actual fire alarms. So what was setting all these alarms off you may wonder. Your guess is as good as mine…

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5. DaSilva’s elevators of doom.

Probably DaSilva’s worst (and scariest feature), the elevators. In the beginning it was just the one elevator that would shudder like it was going to plummet to the ground just as it reached any floor. So NOT fun on the first day when you’re not aware that it’s not in fact going to fall and it just does that because it’s a mischievous little thing that gets a kick from making you think you’re about to die. Somewhere along the way though, the other elevator joined in on the game and then they started getting stuck. We went through a period where someone was stuck in the elevator every single day. I once got stuck in there on the ground floor. Sometimes they just wouldn’t be working at all, which isn’t great if you live on the 6^th floor like I did.

You definitely know you lived in DaSilva if you had to make the choice of using the stairs or potentially being stuck in the elevator any time you wanted to leave your floor. Just in case you were wondering, I always took my chances with the elevators.