On Sunday, a gaggle of freshmen raided my room, hoping to scope out the quad they’d be living in next year. As I tour-guided them through my abode, I was struck by the fact that they already knew where they were going be living, because at that point I had no clue what day I was even going to draw, let alone what room I was going to pick. But by now, Wednesday night, most upperclassmen have figured things out too — except those select few with inhumane draw times.

When I first opened the upperclassman draw time list, I did a little Ctrl+F “gir” and found myself a couple dozen pages deeper in than I would’ve liked. Pipe dreams of living in Dod dissolved instantaneously, as did my more reasonable hopes of living in Patton. Then I heard about Room Improvement — a process through which the bottom 25% of the draw can potentially switch into better rooms — and I was optimistic. So I crunched some numbers. Based on that rough arithmetic, I figured that I’d be right on the threshold of that 25%. Today I saw this, and my worst fears were confirmed:

... and Angela Hodgeman smiles not upon me.

I draw at 2:00 on 4/7. The next group draws at 2:08. I occupy the last possible slot before Room Improvement eligibility. It’s a horrible little swath of no man’s land: a very, very bad draw time by any reasonable standard, but just barely good enough to extinguish my one spark of hope.

All singles have been scooped up. I read some reviews of the few remaining quads and they’re almost hilariously tragic. I can’t help but laugh. Don’t think I’ll still be laughing at 2:08 tomorrow.