Dorm review: East Neighborhood: North Hubbard Hall

Hello! 

I know it's been awhile, but I just wanted to get this review up! You might have seen one like this before on the blog without pictures, because I had it scheduled and didn't get it together enough to post the pictures before it went up. So, last night when I had insomnia, I re-wrote the post and got the pictures together.

This is a post in (another) series that I'm starting, about the dorms on campus. I won't be doing every single dorm unless requested (through the comments or through an email), but I will try to post an in-depth review with pictures (if I have them) and a review on the entire dorm. I'll start with Hubbard Hall. I believe it's the same in North and South, but I lived in North Hubbard on the first floor. 

If you check your StuInfo account, you might see your room assignment! I had AOP on this day last year, and they posted the room assignments. Now, the housing department will say that it's not set in stone and it's used for billing purposes, but for me it was my first room assignment. So who knows, you might find your roommate based off this assignment and keep them or not. (For me, I received the right assignment. But I did end up switching to North Hubbard, so I'll do another post on that in case someone else is like me and wants to switch buildings/roommates).

These are pictures that I took when I first moved into the dorm. Because my roommate was an international student, she moved in before me and her stuff was in the room, so I couldn't take pictures of the whole room. Also, I took them with my iPod, so the quality's not the best, but beggars can't be choosers.

First, I guess we'll start with the end of my room. There was this huge window. I am horrible at taking pictures, but you should be able to see that the window is huge. It has blinds covering it. There's a window sill in front that is also really wide, big enough to sit on! (although 1, we kept stuff on the window sill so it was too cluttered and 2, if you sit on it, be careful not to fall out of the window).

In front of the window (and to the left a little) was my desk! My desk was very pretty, kind of wide. It had a pull out shelf under it. The picture's a little wonky, but that's to show depth (and also because, actually, this picture I snapped off of a video that I took on move-in day. I won't post the video because it was horrible, but I did capture some good shots from it when I went over it last night). There was a cover for the shelf that slid out, which is the black thing you see between the desk and the shelf.

My chair. A simple black rolling chair with arm rests. It wasn't bad, just not super comfy since it's plastic.

On top of my desk, attached to the wall, was a humongous tack board. Gorgeous! For the first week, it was ultra bare, but I bought a ton of costume jewelry for cheap from the mall and hung it up, and then I started putting random flyers up. I wanted to post my pictures in a bare room but sadly, that didn't quite work out. The tack board has about another inch on the left that I cut off on accident, but that's about the size. The flowers were a gift from my roommate, since she went on a trip just before I moved in and I didn't meet her until a few days later. 

Next is my bed. I took a couple of different shots for you. The right one is how it looked shortly after I moved in, when my cousin lofted it for me. The angle is a little funny to show you the steps on the side, and the left picture is just the side bar that keeps you from crashing and dying. As for the towels and random stuff laying on the side, that is because those steps HURT. That's why I ultimately unlofted my bed. You can kind of see in the first picture, my refrigerator under the bed. Lofted, I would say that the bed is about 6-7'. Unlofted (which I have on my phone, I'll have to update) is about 4'. 

Moving on, there's a bathroom (which I didn't get a picture of), and then the little entrance way to the dorm. This is a mirror over the dresser. I'm 5'1" and I could barely see it (I'm on my tip toes), my roommate had a mirror that she had on the dresser that we mostly used. A coffeemaker on the left, which I mentioned in my Dorm items: Food/kitchen post. You can barely see it, but there's a plastic "go green" bottle that they give to all residents.

The dresser. I didn't have that many clothes, and neither did my roommate, so we put mostly food and personal stuff in there. As you can see, the drawers were kind of deep. Since the top drawer didn't open all the way, we stuck tea and hair supplies (hair dryer, straightener, etc.) in there. The top was kind of a mess, because we stored our makeup up there. 

Directly across from the mirror and dressers is the closet space. The closet has a pole and two hooks on the far left side. I couldn't take a picture of the entire closet, because my roommate had already moved in. As you can see, there's a little shelf on top of the closet. It was pretty tall, because I could fit my box from the dresser there for the entire semester. 

On top of that was this huge open space. It had sliding doors, but it was too high for both my roommate and I to reach (it reached to the top of the ceiling). She ended up storing her suitcases there.

That's it! I stole a picture from my roommate so you can kind of see the room. Also, under her bed, you can see the other storage units that we had. These were modular, meaning we could take them apart and re-arrange them however we wanted. There's two shelves and a drawer on the bottom. I took one of the shelves and put it under my bed because even when it was unlofted, it was too high for me to just jump onto. For the other shelf and the drawer, I left them under her bed and just used them to store knickknacks. Along the far wall, you can see half of the window and her desk and chair. The grey thing along the wall is the heater. 

There is the room review. I really did like it, except for the fact that they didn't really use the heater in winter (it was so cold in there, which may or may not have been mostly because we were on the first floor), and then seemed to crank it up as it got closer to spring, so the room was roasting. 

The dining hall: Hubbard's dining hall is not TOO bad. It has three stations, Piazza, which serves made-to-order omelets for breakfast and made-to-order pasta for lunch and dinner; Terra Salsa Verde, which served Tex-Mex style food like nachos, quesadillas and tacos; and Today's Features, which had various food every day. It also has two rows of salad bar. The food wasn't too bad, but it wasn't as good as some of the other dorms on campus. The dining hall itself is very, very dark because of the blinds that they have on the windows. 

The rest of it: Hubbard is home to the East Neighborhood engagement center. At the engagement center, you can see UUD advisors, and I think they have tutoring and computer services there. They also have a writing center there, where you can set up an appointment to get help with writing papers. There is a fabulous Sparty's in Hubbard, which has a grill and fryer, so you can order hot meals like hamburgers and fries or chicken tenders as part of your Combo-X-Change. The Olin Neighborhood Clinic is located in South Hubbard, and I went there twice during the year (you get three free visits as a student). It's super convenient, and they're really helpful and can write prescriptions. There are classrooms in the basement, and there's a small computer lab (8 computers and a printer) in North Hubbard. I believe that Hubbard was recently remodeled, because they have a lounge area near the computer lab that has comfortable couches and televisions. 

Overall, I loved Hubbard. It is the farthest from the East Campus bus stop, but the walk to it (not that far, really) is just beautiful. I had a pretty good experience at Hubbard, and I would honestly recommend it. 

I hope this helped you if you got assigned here! 

Go green!
Rakuzen