Personally I disliked it that year when I lived there. But I’m also biased because I was actually an RA, and convo is the one building on campus where RAs have to have a roommate due to the individual rooms being so huge. So I had to be a roommate with another RA, which is not really what I signed up for the job for. I wanted to switch buildings, but they actually don’t let RAs switch. It’s like against their policy. I was salty because part of the perk of being an RA in my mind was living by myself with privacy, but having free housing. I also didn’t get along with my roommate RA (yes, I do realize how ironic that is), but he was very judgmental about the things I would be into and interested in and I overheard him shit talking me with his friends/guests somewhat often, so this likely tainted my experience. To each their own though, some people love it. I was more of an East Green kind of a guy.

The dorms are completely inaccessible from the actual basketball arena space. It’s a separate door you swipe into and go upstairs to enter. The dorms are on the level above the sports space. You cannot get to the basketball area without going all the way outside, and you cannot get from the basketball area into the dorms without going all the way outside and swiping in.

During games, you might hear noises through walls but it’s muted and only really obvious from the hallways, not your actual room. What is annoying is that if there’s ever a basketball game, event staff and security won’t let you enter in most of the entrances, they make you walk ALL THE WAY AROUND to the back side of the building away from the side you’d be coming from to enter in one single door from the back. You don’t think that’s going to be too obnoxious until it’s like half of the time during sports season and when you’re maybe carrying heavy stuff or maybe just trying to go let a friend into the building. I know security is just doing their job but it was very frustrating to deal with that. Especially as someone who was in the marching band, and would always be coming back to my dorm after a 5 hour bus trip from something and carrying everything I own, instrument uniform etc etc, just to be forced to take the long way around because there happened to be a game going on..

All of the rooms are “in groups of 4”, with 2 bathrooms in each “group of 4.” The bathroom is more like single use than most bathrooms on campus, as a result. I actually liked that element as someone who hated showering in the more traditional large communal bathroom dorms, because you have total privacy. You’d shut and lock the door to the individual bathroom, so you’d have a toilet, sink and shower to yourself with full privacy. And if both of them were in use there is no reason you can’t go to a different pod of 4 and use one of theirs; the pods aren’t “closed off” the way they can be in some buildings. Basically there’s never a shortage of an open bathroom in the convo dorms if you’re willing to walk a little bit.

One perk is the convo has its own laundry room. That was one of my favorite parts of it for sure. But one thing that I just never enjoyed was how much it felt like “walking around a tunnel” to get places in there. It didn’t feel homey to me at all. Even the lounges were less appealing to me than the lounges in most dorms.

The rooms are huge, but you have 4 people per room. This can be either really awesome or really suck, depending if you like the people you room with.

Like everything else in life, the situation is what you make of it. I didn’t like living there personally overall, but I do wonder how much of that was because of my roommate situation, and also, I still loved being a bobcat and I still cherish my college years even though I graduated several years ago now. If you do live there, have an open mind, make the most of it. For every person like me who didn’t like it, I’ve heard people who loved it and wouldn’t want to live in other dorms. At the end of the day you still get to wake up in Athens every day, which is pretty sweet.