00:00Hi I'm Sophia. And I'm Courtney. Um, are you saying that? No you say welcome to our
00:06Sweet Diggs, I say the penthouse. That's right. Sweet Diggs, all right.
00:11Hi I'm Sophia. And I'm Courtney. And welcome to our Sweet Diggs. A dorm room on the penthouse
00:16floor of Hewitt Hall. We go to Barnard College which is the women's college affiliated with
00:19Columbia University. We pay roughly $5,200 per semester per person, which is about $1,300 a month.
00:26It's definitely expensive, but we have to remember that we're living in New York City,
00:30and we pay for a lot of amenities. We have lots of security, a washer and dryer in the building,
00:35our cafeteria is right downstairs, and we don't have to clean the communal bathrooms,
00:39and our facilities are great. This is my desk where I get ready in the morning. I would describe my
00:47home style as minimalistic, but also inspired by the city. I have a lot of different New York City
00:54skylines, and my color palette is very black, white, and gray. I purchased this marble contact
01:00paper off of Amazon, which has been great. I put it on my desk and on my shelves, and it
01:06kind of gets
01:06rid of that typical college dorm wooden furniture. This is one of the two closets which Courtney and I
01:13share. We do borrow each other's clothes sometimes, but obviously asking her first. I am majoring in art
01:19history and minoring in English. I'm a history major and an environmental science minor. We met online.
01:25I put a little advertisement out in the Barnard Class of 2021 Facebook page looking for a roommate,
01:31and I kind of said a little bit about myself and asked if anyone would be interested in rooming with
01:35me, and Sophia messaged me, and we talked for a little bit, and then we decided ultimately not
01:40to room together. She explained that she has a boyfriend who would be coming over, so I kind of
01:47dipped out of that situation, but I love Nick. Shout out to you. The first day of our orientation program,
01:54I saw her in the Barnard Quad, and I went up and introduced myself, and now ironically we live together.
02:01My bed and my photo wall. Trying to get inspired as to how I was going to decorate my dorm
02:06room this year,
02:06I saw a photo off of Pinterest with a wall with a bunch of little black crosses for super cheap,
02:12and they were really hard to put up. I measured each one perfectly. I appreciate how precise the
02:18measurements are because I look at them from my side of the room, and it's great. And I also have
02:24a
02:24stuffed octopus named Oswald. Everyone who comes to visit our room always gravitates towards it. When we
02:30moved in, I just turned to Sophia and I was like, we should totally get a fish because it's the
02:34only pet
02:35you're allowed to have on campus. And I was like, you know, why not? We walked down to the pet
02:39store
02:40and picked up a beautiful betta fish that we named Jeremiah, which for no particular reason,
02:47we just loved the name. He lived above my dresser next to Courtney's bed. Sadly, he did not make it
02:54to
02:54the second semester, but he did survive all of the first semester. I want to get another fish because we
02:59have all the materials and stuff. She's not at all. I'm not into it. She's done with the fish.
03:04Yeah. This is my bed where I do all my homework. I wanted to buy the headboard for myself, and
03:08my parents
03:08were like, that's ridiculous. You do not need that. You are in a college dorm room. But when it was
03:12half
03:12off at Bed Bath & Beyond, I was like, gotta get it. It's the thing I get the most compliments
03:16on in my room.
03:17I think it really pulls it together. And it's great because it keeps my bed from moving around in the
03:21bed frame,
03:22which is a practical reason, and makes it more homey. I would describe my home style as modern and slightly
03:27traditional, like a little bit of a mesh. Whereas I think Sophia, her design is fully modern. I think
03:32she features geometric shapes and a lot of neutral colors. I think I add a little bit more color,
03:38like my headboard and my lamp and my gallery wall that make it feel more like a home and more
03:43permanent than just a dorm room. Sophia and I did not coordinate our designs for the room. When we
03:46arrived on the first day, it kind of just all fell into place. We have a very similar color scheme,
03:52so it looks really great together. Our biggest splurge is definitely the carpet, which was about $60,
03:56and we split it amongst the two of us. It's a scrap from some other carpet that they had there,
04:01so it was pretty cheap in terms of the size of it. We didn't measure it out at all. We
04:06just kind of
04:06showed up on move-in day and rolled it out and it fit perfectly. And I have some wall decals,
04:13but those weren't planned. They were leftover from Halloween decorations and I just took off all the
04:17Halloween stickers. One of the drawers on my dresser does not close anymore because for Halloween,
04:24she hung up a bunch of fake spider webs on my dresser and I think one of them got caught
04:30and
04:30now it just won't close no matter how hard I try. Sorry about that. It's okay. This is my makeshift
04:37nightstand slash dresser and this is the closet that we share. My interest in fashion influenced
04:42my decor style through photographs. A lot of the pictures I have hanging in frames come from fashion
04:46magazines from editorial shoots that I admire. We share both of our closets and we divide them for
04:51everyday clothes and coats. Sophia always has the left side and I always have the right side. I think
04:56I definitely sometimes overtake the closet because I live so close to home and it's easy for me to
05:01bring stuff in and out on the train whereas she has to fly here so I sometimes I feel like
05:06I'm
05:06enroaching on her side but it's fine. Right. I hope it's fine. I think it's fine. We live in a
05:11building that was
05:12built in the early 1900s and some of the windows are very old so when it's windy out you can
05:19hear a lot of
05:19the shaking and sound from the wind. We could not sleep. We had earplugs and we would just wake up
05:26the next morning super tired but Courtney was a genius and fixed it. I went to the bathroom and
05:32I grabbed a bunch of paper towels and I just started shoving them in the window until it stopped moving
05:37around and now we don't hear any wind anymore. It is totally windproof and we can sleep well at night.
05:42For next year's housing we just chose it's going to be a suite style living in a different dorm
05:48with four of our other close friends. We're going to be living there for one semester and then for
05:53the spring semester we're both going abroad to Italy and we'll probably be roommates there as well.
05:57We haven't talked about what we were going to do after college but I 100% would be down to
06:01live
06:01with you. I'd be down to live with you too. What isn't the best part about living with your best
06:06friend?
06:06It feels like a sleepover every night so that's the only way to describe it. And you can come home
06:11at the
06:11end of the day and just like talk to them about what's on your mind and Courtney always hears all
06:16of my my thoughts and my problems and I always hear hers. The best piece of advice that Courtney
06:23always gives me is to not overthink everything. I have a tendency to dig into every detail and she
06:30always reminds me just to take life as it is and to take it easy. The best advice I've ever
06:35gotten
06:35from Sophia is to take time to think before I act. I'm an Aries so I'm very bold. I like
06:42to be
06:42spontaneous and sometimes it's better to take a step back and be more reserved and I think Sophia's
06:47really taught me to do that.
