{"id":7554,"date":"2025-07-22T21:20:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7554"},"modified":"2025-07-22T23:38:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T04:38:21","slug":"life-as-the-dorm-dj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/life-as-the-dorm-dj\/","title":{"rendered":"Life as the Dorm DJ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I moved into my dorm room at Jones Hall, I did everything I could to help it feel like home. I stopped at the nearby Target for a floor rug and a cosmetic mirror. I stocked up on pretzels and candy, hoping for late-night movies and games with friends I hadn\u2019t made yet. But when I woke up the first morning, one part of my dorm didn\u2019t feel like home. It was quiet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I asked my roommate if she would mind music. I started tentatively, playing songs from my \u201chappy driving\u201d Apple Music playlist only off my phone. Immediately, being able to sing along to the chorus of \u201cStyle\u201d (Taylor\u2019s Version, of course) and fill the silence helped me relax. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Within a day, I upgraded to my JBL-dupe Amazon speaker, playing music for others on my floor as I walked to and from the bathroom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then the girls from across the hall started humming along.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically every moment I was in the dorm, I played music off my speaker. I feel for my friend Nora Ahearn of Dallas whose room is adjacent to the bathroom, because she can hear me crooning Noah Kahan\u2019s \u201cEverywhere, Everything,\u201d in the shower. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My playlist \u201cNot even at all\u201d (a \u201c10 Things I Hate About You\u201d reference) helped us pretend we were in a 2000s rom-com, while \u201cCold outside,\u201d my winter playlist, cooled us down on 90-degree days.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We threw dance parties to Taylor Swift. Belted out Hamilton while brushing our teeth. Held rap battles to Drake. I was known as \u201cthat one girl who always plays music\u201d, and then just as Lila.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an unfamiliar place, being the Dorm DJ made Jones Hall my home and helped me find my family.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How playing music in the dorm helped me form connections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"featured_media":7918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[453],"ppma_author":[452],"class_list":["post-7554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences","tag-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":452,"user_id":220,"is_guest":0,"slug":"lilagoldin","display_name":"Lila Goldin","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a481aeb7a8b1fcc8c1544f7e8530be12dbb5ff5dfe6069b729f297bc9eb975fa?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Goldin","first_name":"Lila","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7554"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10201,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions\/10201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7554"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}