The Elder Cockpit made the strongest influence on my first year experience here. Wow, you all are my Sunday noons, my Friday nights, my Monday afternoons cramming for exams, my Thursday dinners for takeout, and my Wednesday evenings for Smash sprees.

Our friendships started out of a shared excitement for Super Smash Bros. I feel at ease hanging out one-on-one with any Cockpit member, and I have really discovered just how well I get along with guys. It was enriching and refreshing being a girl in a group of guys who genuinely enjoyed Smash. What started out as one girl and five guys who loved Smash grew into a huge group of people who sat around watching TV, studying, eating, and playing AVALON.

It wasn’t long before I became known as the token girl of the Elder Cockpit, a title that I am so proud to have. I am your mom, your class clown, and your enthused late night Smash buddy.

So often I have come back from a party, a restaurant, a class, Chicago, or just from upstairs in my room in my pajamas to the lounge, where I first felt welcomed and a part of a community. We have our own group politics and inside jokes, and…I am excited to bring my friends back to the Cockpit, a paradise that I describe as having “food, drinks, music, and video games; what else would you want?”

I am devastated that I won’t come back to this atmosphere in the fall. When we all split up to live who-knows-where, I’ll miss having a lounge just downstairs where I can go to take a break from homework (or more likely watching Law & Order: SVU) to play a half-hour of video games. It will be more difficult to organize hangouts if we all have to voluntarily coordinate plans, but I am beyond grateful to have lived in this dorm as a freshman and to have stumbled upon the Cockpit.

I know what other floors say. I know that people walk by and sometimes judge us because lots of people think that video games are meaningless, but I know that people relieve their stress and have fun in different ways. I have grown rock hard against their stares and judgmental vibes and am ready to defend my crew to the death!

This group of people helped define my entire freshman year. Nothing will be the same, but danks for the memeries, crew.