By Anna Joranger

As a senior in high school anxiously awaiting my transition into the perfect college life, I arrived at Macalester for my prospective freshman experience last fall with nothing but high expectations.

My hosts were Doty residents, and they helped me to feel at ease with the possibility of attending Macalester. They answered all of my questions (both appropriate and inappropriate), got me started on my developing Dunn Brothers addiction and intimidated me with their knowledge of “The West Wing.” I was also relieved to see the reasonable size of their dorm room, the decent quality of their bathrooms and especially their generous windows. That was a selling point.

Alas, I wound up in Dupre. I will avoid all superfluous complaints—although many, like the toilet paper, are worth mentioning—and skip to the one aspect of my dorm that really, truly pisses me off: the windows, if you can call them that.

Where are the lovely, inviting windows that I expected after last year’s visit? I walked into my new living space on Sept. 2 and found two slits that may or may not exceed two feet in width. They also happen to be positioned in the corners, behind my and my roommate’s bed-desks, making their (almost non-) existence even more impossible to enjoy.

You would think that such pathetic portholes (I’m told that past incidents involving the disposal of furniture out of them led to their shrinkage, but this might be pure rumor) would shut off all access to the outside world, but they admit enough noise that I still get to enjoy perks such as being woken up at 9:30 on a Saturday morning by marathon runners and cowbells.

Another anecdote. Thanks to the Midwestern paranoia that leads me to believe that every nice day is the last, I desperately wanted my windows open the other day, so my roommate and I left only the screens on. We left. A few hours later we returned to find that tiny bugs—tiny enough to slip through the screen—were infesting our windows. Finding no other solution to this problem, we closed the windows immediately. Thus the only positive experience I could have had with them ended prematurely.

I briefly considered colorful curtains or some sort of decoration, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Dupre windows cannot pull off that sort of thing. It’s like dolling up the awkward kid in Little Miss Sunshine and having her dance to “Superfreak:” anything extra just does not work.

At least the awkward little girl does dance routines created by her cocaine-addicted grandfather. My windows lack even one endearing quality.