The author's child Zadie gets a taste of dormitory life for solar eclipse chasers at SUNY Potsdam in New York for the overall solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. (Image credit: Future/Space. com/Tariq Malik)
POTSDAM, New York– I actually believed I left dormitory life behind 20 years back. Simply when I believed I was out, an overall solar eclipse pulled me back in.
For the last couple of days, my 15-year-old child Zadie and I have actually been residing in an unused part of Knowles Hall North, a dorm here at the State University of New York Potsdam, to witness a celestial phenomenon: the 2024 overall solar eclipse on April 8. For a simple $60 a night (my initial hotel was $370 a night), we've dozed in sleeping bags on empty extra-long twin beds (we chose to avoid bringing our own sheets and blankets) in order to capture a couple of short minutes of totality as the moon obstructs the sun on April 8.
The spaces are a bit hot. We share common restrooms. And we're not alone.
In all, SUNY Potsdam opened some 50 approximately unused dormitory, each with 2 beds, to university alumni (and folks like me who occurred to discover the link online) happy to review their college days and trade the convenience of a hotel for the distance to SUNY Potsdam, which is hosting a large variety of academic eclipse-themed activities to observe the occasion. The university's e-mail alone sufficed to stand out of Colleen Parriott, a SUNY Potsdam Class of '82 alum from Sparta, New Jersey, who together with her hubby Don dropped strategies a year in the making to enjoy the eclipse from the huge city of Rochester and rather go back to Potsdam, a town of 15,000 individuals.
“We heard that Rochester was going to end up being a zoo, and we got something from Potsdam stating that they were going to open the dormitories, which they were going to have sort of a celebration,” Colleen Parriott, 64, informed me while playing cards in a common area in the dormitory, including that the instructional activities were what captured her eye. “And that was appealing to us, due to the fact that we are overall geeks.”
Related: 10 things you most likely didn't learn about the solar eclipse 2024
(Image credit: Future/Space. com/Tariq Malik)
Knowles Hall North, where we're remaining, is the precise very same dormitory Parriott lived in as an undergrad while at SUNY Potsdam. While it looks the exact same, some things are various.
“I'm on the very first flooring now,” Parriott stated. “When I was here, very first flooring was young boys and the 2nd flooring was women, other than for completion, that was kids, due to the fact that normally they separated the halls.”
Breaking area news, the most recent updates on rocket launches, skywatching occasions and more!
Sarah Huggins, SUNY Potsdam Class of '81, stated her initial dormitory of Knowles Hall West isn't far from here,
