Aileen Santiago

At the start of the year, my friend invited me to a pregame in her suite. Stepping through the door, I felt like I’d walked onto the set of a college movie. The walls were alive with vibrant posters, cozy pillows covered every nook and the whole room was illuminated by delicately hung string lights — it was a picture perfect tableau of college life. As I soaked in this aesthetic scene, I realized that my own suite was painfully dull.

Eight weeks in and E44 still had no character. The furniture was awkwardly arranged, and besides our one Yale flag, the walls were bare. There wasn’t any decor that suggested four people actually lived there. Having seen so many friends’ perfectly decorated rooms, I knew that I had to get my common room up to par. So, over the last few weeks I set out to craft the quintessential Yale suite.

I envisioned a room with a well balanced color scheme, an assortment of cozy furnishings and cohesive decorations that would make it look like a living room straight from a magazine. I wanted to create a comfortable space that would bring our suite together and make the dorm feel like a home. However, given the nature of our suite it seemed like I had my work cut out for me. I was a Canadian, suddenly living alongside a New Yorker, a Kentuckian and a Californian — my suitemates span the whole range of American political identities and regional quirks. 

Hara Lessandra of Untamed Creatures encourages homeowners to use animal-themed wall art or throw pillows to infuse subtle yet striking elements of nature into their spaces.

In fact, our first substantial conversation as a suite was about nothing less than politics. While I was on my laptop scrolling Amazon for decor, simply trying to find a good throw pillow, my suitemates began debating about gun violence and border control. Some words traced the edge between a debate and a fight, and I realized the bigger issue than what carpet or lamp to buy was whether this microcosm of America would even be able to co-exist. Nevertheless, my mission persisted. 

After bringing up the plan of zhuzhing up our room, one of my suitemates unveiled the LED lights he’d had the whole time. The two of us spent a night meticulously putting them up. It was a laborious process of dragging a chair around the room, me on my tiptoes trying to get them angled correctly, while he unraveled the lights beside me. He’d done all this before — these LED lights were a staple at his Virginia boarding school. As we worked, he recounted stories of how they’d lit up his old dorm with a certain warmth in his voice that matched the lights now illuminating our room. While they weren’t part of my initial design, they brought the space one step closer to my vision. 

However, a wrench was thrown into my plan when I came home the next day to find a new flag proudly displayed in the room. The day after that another suitemate put up their own flag in response. The aesthetic was going from chic to United Nations core. So I ordered a Canadian flag to defiantly hang in my own corner. I quickly came to realize that the flags add a sense of character and identity to the space. In a fittingly symbolic way, our grand Yale flag is hung over the couch in the center of the room — tying us, for all our differences, together. Slowly but surely our common room was becoming a truly shared space and everyone brought a little bit of themselves to it.

My Kentuckian suitemate established a ritual of communal plates of candy, a testament to his Southern hospitality. Each day he refills it with a new mountain of sweets that I try not to eat — although the piles of wrappers on my desk always tells another story.

Our New Yorker started regaling us with tales of Westchester and hometown love. His social energy encouraged our conversations and the hosting of impromptu gatherings, which have brought a convivial character to the space — and a growing collection of empty liquor bottles now displayed on our mantle. 

We still have the occasional heated discussion and a whole list of values that don’t align, but we’ve established a cohesive and fun living unit. In fact, the different ways we see the world weren’t ruining the vibe but made the vibe. It feels like the essence of America has been distilled into one room, and I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to this country. I’d always been taught that Canada is a cultural mosaic, while the U.S. is a melting pot, but I don’t see that here. The American culture in our room is far from being boiled down to one identity, and that makes it perfect. With each little thing we’ve brought to the space, not just physical objects but parts of our identities, we’ve put tiles into the mosaic of our new home.

At the start of October we threw our first suite party, celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving. For the first time in my life, I wouldn’t be spending the holiday around a dinner table with my family, but in a new country with a group of Americans I’d only known for a few weeks. But as the night went on and our suite filled with music, dancing and laughter I felt like we’d achieved the picture of college life I’d hoped to create. Our common room, while it didn’t have the dressings and designs of others, was perfect.