The dog days of summer—the colloquial term for the midsummer days with the most intense heat—ended on August 3rd, but you wouldn’t know it walking around Oberlin this week. The last few days here have been incredibly hot and humid, and truth be told slightly miserable. I cannot stand the heat—anytime it’s above 80, I probably hate life at least a little—and I feel like a broken record, complaining about the weather to all my friends, professors, and even campus workers. It’s all made worse by the fact that I live in Baldwin Cottage, a gorgeous 19th-century building…with no air conditioning. A few dorms here have AC, especially newer or newly-renovated dorms, including Dascomb, Woodland, and Kahn, but there are still plenty of dorms without, like mine. It’s been my first time living through a heat wave without AC, and it’s definitely been a learning experience. Now that it’s the weekend, the heat has started to break, but during the week I tried to stay cool however I could.
During the day, I do my best to stay indoors and keep hydrated. My water bottle is currently filled with a mixture of water, ice, and two different lemonades, because fun flavored drinks make me more likely to want to actually drink than plain water. Oberlin has a variety of sources for hydration, including water bottle fillers, dining halls, Azariah’s Cafe in Mudd, and DeCafe, and I think I’ve used all of them during this heat wave. Many academic buildings have AC, and the Mudd Center, home to Oberlin’s largest library, is also air-conditioned, so I’ve been taking advantage of that. Even when I don’t have work to do, I’ve found quiet corners of Mudd to relax in instead of returning to my dorm like I normally do. If you’re sick of being in the same place, though, get a change of scenery! Getting off campus can be helpful if you feel stuck—Fridays I don’t have class, so yesterday I rented a car, picked up some lunch, and read by the lake for an hour or so for a different environment and a break from my room. If it’s hard to get off campus, the AJLC (short for Adam Joseph Lewis Center, the environmental studies building) is a bit warmer than Mudd, but also air-conditioned and very peaceful and pretty. The first floor atrium is full of plants, meaning that you can feel like you’re still in nature even when you’re cooped up inside to avoid heat.
However, I sadly can’t sleep in Mudd, so every night I do eventually have to return to my room and make an attempt to cool it down. I mostly accomplish this through fans—I have two, a small desk fan and a larger floor fan. Wednesday night was the hottest night of the heat wave, but also probably the night that I managed to cool down my room the most. When the sun went down, I opened my window and propped open the door to my room. (For some reason, the Baldwin hallway has been consistently cooler than my room, something I definitely took advantage of during the hottest moments.) Then I turned my lights off and put my floor fan up to the window and flipped my desk fan so it pointed toward my bed and chair. Every so often, the fan would blow a cool breeze from outside into my room, and it was the best feeling in the world. After a little less than two hours of this, my room wasn’t exactly cold, but definitely the coolest it had been in at least two days. Before I went to bed, I took a cold shower to soak my hair and froze my two cooling towels so they would be as cold as possible when I went to sleep. I also ate some ice cream from DeCafe—not just because it was frozen, but also because I decided I deserved it for surviving the day. I actually managed to fall asleep despite the heat, which was a pleasant surprise. After that night, the worst was over, and I was proud of myself for using my resources and making it through.
So, if you end up in a room without AC, it isn’t the end of the world, even if your room is miserably hot and you can’t step outside without melting. Invest in a good fan, stay hydrated, and find air conditioning elsewhere on campus. There are plenty of ways to beat the heat on campus while still having fun or getting things done, trust me, and if I can do it, I have faith that you can, too.
