Welcome to the Nest!

Since our first day at USC it has been clear that our suite is awesome. And not just in the way that everybody gets along fine and manages to stay out of each other's ways. On our first night living in Parkside, most of our suite mates sat down on the floor in one of the rooms as we went around sharing interesting facts and details about ourselves. Quickly we learned that immense variety was present in our talents and experiences, but that we also had a great deal of similarities in our interests. We have singers and actors, bilingual students and artists, engineers and psychology majors. We instantly clicked.

(One of our first nights as The Nest)

After our first day together, we decided that we needed a name for our collective group. Our name needed to describe our suite as a whole and convey the coziness that we hoped our home away from home would offer us. After much debate over names such as "the lair" (too sinister), and "the warehouse" (too cold), we eventually settled on "The Nest."

Our next move was to meet the other people on our floor, so we invited them to our suite with sticky notes on their doors, introducing ourselves as The Nest. Soon, we had people coming over to hang out all the time. The suites around us even began to follow our lead, coming up with names for themselves as well – our favorite is "The Valt" (All it needs is "u" – how clever!).

(The door of The Valt)

The layout of The Nest is fairly simple. We have four bedrooms, with two people in each, and a common area with a table and chairs. The common room is where most of us sit to hang out and talk. All of our friends come over to visit with us and tell funny stories about their days. Our common area is also home to some of our so college lists, like our communal bucket list and our list of #classic things people have said so far.

With so many people visiting our suite, we have even adopted several of them into The Nest. It all started with our friend Alex (who lives in another dorm), but the list has expanded to include a few Valt members and our friend Ryan from down the hall. Our adopted members hang out with us at all hours and even join us for game day and adventures around Los Angeles!!

(The Nest's first outing to L.A. Live!)

The Nest, and all of our adoptees, is truly one of the greatest blessings for us at USC. We are so lucky to be able to come home to such a close group of friends and have such a great group to call up to grab lunch or dinner. We have family dinners together, go tailgating together, go to games together, and even get on national TV together!

 (Game day with The Nest)

xoxo

Gabby and Julie