Home Sweet Home: The Mayfields
Well, this summer marks the end of the “Ki-Slam” era. At the end of this semester, the dormitories on Kissam Quad are going to be bulldozed and replaced by a new set of residential houses. This residential campus will be very similar to the Commons, but will be for upperclassmen. The project is expected to be completed in August 2014 (my senior year!), and until then a few changes have been made in the housing selection process for the upperclassmen. A couple of my friends and I knew it would be difficult to get our first choice of housing since we are rising sophomores, AKA the bottom of the upperclassmen food chain (a lot of my friends got their first choices though!). With this knowledge in mind, we decided to apply for a Living Learning Community (LLC) lodge called the Mayfield.
- A sketch of the new college halls. They are expected to be finished August 2014, just in time for my last year of college. I can’t wait!
Honestly, the Mayfield community has always sparked my interest. A Mayfield is a house located on Highland Quad with ten single rooms, two bathrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. There are twenty Mayfields on campus. It sounds like a great deal, doesn’t it? However, there is a competitive application process. Since the Mayfields are part of the LLC program, each group must create a learning project to complete during the year. A detailed project proposal, a faculty adviser’s letter of support, and an interview are all components of the application process. After many stressful nights of working on our project proposal, finding a faculty adviser (the amazing Dr. Helmuth, head of the best house on Commons, Sutherland), and going to an interview, my friends and I found out that our project was approved and we have been given a Mayfield for the 2012-2013 academic year!
Our Mayfield project is Multicultural Eating and Learning (M.E.A.L.). Through our project, we hope to learn about other cultures through cuisine. Every member in our Mayfield has a diverse background (for example, I am half-Persian), so we plan to learn about each other’s cultures throughout the year. There will be a specific culture/country theme for each month. During each month, we will discover this culture by having weekly homemade meals (I should probably learn how to cook soon…), taking a trip to an authentic restaurant, and celebrating a holiday associated with the culture being studied. In addition, we plan to host Sutherland’s signature house event, cafecitos, to teach the Class of 2016 about the Mayfield community. Overall, it should be a rewarding and unique experience!
Throughout the year, we are going to record the progress of our project through an online blog. In fact, I plan to publish a few of our adventures on here. So stay tuned for some reflections, lots of pictures, and even a few recipes! With six guys, four girls, and a small kitchen, who knows what will happen!