“Q. Where do Huntsman students live?”
In short, here, there, and everywhere else.
Huntsman Program students come from all over the country just as much as they come from countries all over. In that sense, they live “everywhere else”. From their sophomore year on, they also live in houses, apartments, or other on-campus housing, fulfilling the “there” clause. But it is in the freshman year that one can truly feel the full diversity of a Huntsman class, “here”, in the 3rd floor of King’s Court (KC3), the home of the Huntsmanite Freshman.
For many, this is the first time living away from home. For others, the novelty of the experience lies in meeting and engaging their roommates and neighbors. I’ve always thought that an ideal Huntsman Program should involve a compulsory travel semester where the entire class travels to the home countries (even states) of different class members and we would learn about the different cultures, economies, histories, as well as sights firsthand from the host classmate. KC3 is the next best thing. From my room in Philadelphia I can walk 6 feet across the corridor into Uzbekistan, or take a left into Mexico. Along my morning sprint to the co-ed bathroom I can hi-five my favorite Minnesotans and duet with our fabulous Georgian. I’ve been made a “knight” of Peru and played Zimbabwean Solitaire, all in KC3. And of course, people are always welcome to and frequently do come and ask me about my homeland Singapore. While I will refrain from simply listing the places we are from, the temptation to gush about this alone is great.
How else has the Class of 2011 made life in KC3 unique? I don’t have a basis of comparison but I can make some guesses. It seems the biggest changes have been that we no longer partition the floor into different “wings”, and that we have no open door policy. Yes, you heard it right, we now call A wing “the cool side” and B wing “the cooler side” (it has our sole water fountain). We were also never told that we should always leave our doors open. While this may have been fortunate for those of us with undergarments prone to misappropriation, the primary effect of this has been to rapidly deplete our messageboard markers with humorous messages and probably inappropriate artistic attempts at the portrayal of the human condition. Yet closed doors, to us, were never a hindrance to interaction. We would hang out in the spacious corner rooms, talking about life, liberty, and the pursuit, or out at the elevator lounges, where constant dings and passerbys would ensure that we stayed awake enough to finish that paper, but mostly we would relax in the KC3 lounge, where board games, study breaks, the TV and a donated Nintendo system made for a potently attractive common area where we would de-stress, celebrate birthdays, or even deliver the occasional impromptu speech involving Aristocrats. Perhaps our doors were closed because we were interacting more, keeping our perfectly legal activities away from the nevertheless prying eyes of our RAs.
A word about those RAs: in a word – Amazing. Szoa for her ability to tirelessly dish out advice and talk over our problems, for wowing us by leading the TAs to dance at the Management 100 year-end event, and for taking such good care of us we even formed a Szoa Fan Club. And Gaurav for his amazing nonpresence at the start of the semester, to his amazing over-presence at the end battling it out over MarioKart and Backgammon. I don’t see her much but I’m sure Skye has been doing a great job of caring for those of us scattered in KC4. That brings to mind a few other firsts – the first time all our RAs are Huntsman seniors who have all been through the program and can provide invaluable, specific advice, the first time the program has had so many accepted offers (87%) that we have had to overflow into KC4, and lastly the creativity of the RA’s (and our GA Arlin) in organizing a first-ever Super Study Break that combined their financial resources and provided a wonderful dinner evening (we held it in the Blue Lounge, some of us even set up a sound system and deejayed).
A few of us recently had the opportunity to chat with Penn President Amy Gutmann. She asked how the Huntsman Program could be improved, and when we had gotten over the initial shock of the underlying assumption (that it was -gasp!- imperfect??), the consensus emerged that we as a program had probably outgrown KC3. Perhaps future classes should move into floors where the lifts can actually be depended upon to work, where there is air-conditioning to take the edge off the oppressive heat of summer and early fall, and where the entire program can be fitted on the same floor and room sizes are more equitable. But that is, as the Chinese say, hualongdianjing, or putting the finishing, minor touches on something already fantastic and wonderful. KC3 has been the perfect home away from home, and then some. It is with joy and fond memories that we, the Class of 2011, hurry back from our winter adventures, eager to write the next chapters in our lives at Penn.
