As tires screeched to a halt, hundreds of feet hit the burning asphalt, heads turned and eyes took a first glance at the buildings that would house them for the next school year. After the turn of the key and the click of the lock, the door opens to an empty vault of four white walls. The majority of first-years adorn their dorm rooms with the typical family pictures, posters from Newbury Comics and marker-and-whiteboard on the door. However, for Gabriela Mateo ’13 and Kokaale Amissah-Aidoo ’13, their new room was an opportunity, a canvas on which to draw a picture.

The pencil? Mateo and Amissah-Aidoo decked the walls with what would personalize them the most. The abstract art by Mateo’s sister from Costa Rica color the room with rich purple, bold green and calm blue, juxtaposed with Amissah-Aidoo’s electrifying posters of Bob Marley and the band “Sublime.” A forest surrounds its beastly inhabitants, checked turtles sleep on clouds of seawater and shells plummet from a cochlea as waves bounce off the drum. The sun above “Sublime” dances on the black velvet background and an Abercrombie model stands along a dresser. A sign on the desk that reads “No llamadas internacionales” or “No international calls” reflects Mateo’s over-enthusiasm to call her Costa Rican home for a costly price rather than Skyping.

Faint lights line the room, which mold the contrast between light and shadow. Amissah-Aidoo and Mateo mention that the regular room lights unnecessarily brighten the whole room like the flash from a camera, so the soft holiday lights, along with their many decorations, produce what the roommates describe as not quite “artsy,” beachy” or “smokey,” but a “chill” and welcoming atmosphere.

And whom does the room welcome? Well, room 042 has become a hub of late-night study sessions and conversations among their friends. The voices of both popular singers and friends from down the hall echo in the room. Reggae, rap and Britney pop are only a few streaks of Mateo’s immense song collection, spurring random dance parties in the middle of endless weekday nights under the faint lights that hang around the room.

When these freshmen girls walked into their new room for the first time, they expected to create a room full of colorful decorations, but also ended up finding a vast collection of friends and experiences. Their combination of music, pictures and people created a masterpiece, signed Gabi and Kokaale.

—Jorge Alvarado ’12