#92: Overly elaborate dorm room configurations

It’s already established that residence halls are an important part of life for Notre Dame Students.  At many colleges, dorms might be simply the place where students sleep at night and have a desk to occasionally work; but for Notre Dame Students, dorms actually become their home (and remain as a home for them even after they move out).  In an effort to make their rooms more homey, Notre Dame Students plan and construct the most elaborate dorm rooms possible.

To begin their room construction, Notre Dame Students start at the floor by purchasing wall-to-wall carpeting to cover the tile.  While throw rugs would certainly be the easiest option, Notre Dame Students know that cutting carpeting to perfectly fit their rooms not only looks great and feels comfortable, but requires the extra bit of effort that makes a perfect dorm room (despite the fact that it’s impossible to adequately clean vomit and beer spills out of carpeting).

After their floors are covered, Notre Dame Students will then look for the most efficient way to fit all of the essential beds, desks, wardrobes and dressers into their room.  Being efficient with this is not only important because it saves space for extraneous items later, but it also shows how clever Notre Dame Students can be with using limited resources and building things.  Most Notre Dame Students determine that the best way to go with these essential items is up, and they build elaborate lofts to make their rooms into multi-level enterprises with their beds (and sometimes even desks) high enough off the floor so that they can walk under them and plan a further living space. 

Once they have their essential furniture in place, and have made sure that they have enough room for the largest possible desk chair they can buy at Office Depot, Notre Dame Students shift their attention to the living spaces that are more important to them.  Many students will construct television stands that sometimes act as lofts themselves, oftentimes with room for two or more televisions, mini-fridges, video game systems, sound systems, and cable boxes. 

Notre Dame Students will want their rooms to fit multiple televisions so that they can watch several things at once (especially during football season), and entice as many people as possible to congregate in their room.  To successfully do this, Notre Dame Students will do their best to maximize seating by having multiple couches and chairs in their rooms.  Furthermore, they will maximize viewing opportunities from these couches by raising one or more on cinder blocks above others to create a stadium seating atmosphere that improves sightlines to televisions and shows how serious the residents are about watching sporting events.

As the icing on the cake, Notre Dame Students will construct elaborate bars in their rooms that they will use to host parties and pregames.  These bars will usually have at least one fridge behind them (and oftentimes a blender), as well as a stockpile of liquors, mixers, and a wide array of drinking glasses of all shapes and sizes.  After that, Notre Dame Students will clutter up the walls of their rooms with posters, pennants, flags (see #55), and bar neons in an inexplicable attempt to recreate the atmosphere of a TGI Friday's.

Once they are finished, Notre Dame Students will invite all of their friends over to see how awesome their room is.  They will show it off to people they don’t even know to make themselves feel good.  They will use their awesome room to throw parties and entice people to it, and they will end up losing money maintaining their stockpile of liquor behind the bar.  Ultimately, Notre Dame Students will love these rooms, because once they are complete; they will truly be home.

#91.5: Things Young Alumni Like

1) Sending Text Messages during football games
2) Victory Liquors
3) Lamenting the 2005 loss to USC
4) Thinking Coors Light is a shitty beer (see #28)
5) Younger friends and siblings still at ND
6) Ironically wearing monogram sweater-vests (see #85.5)
7) Being Roommates in Wrigleyville (see #47)
8) Continuing to tout inside information about the football team (see #8)
9) Telling people when they have a med school exam (see #29)
10) Teaching (even though they won’t make careers as teachers)
11) Sneaking into the student section during football games
12) Complaining about the Basilica wedding reservation system
13) Doing service work for a year or two because they were too preoccupied to apply for jobs
14) Matt Leinart’s NFL career
15) Donating money to Notre Dame (even if they don’t have an income)

#77: Celtic Rock

It doesn’t have to be Saint Patrick’s Day (see #11) for Notre Dame Students to be enamored with all things of and (even tangentially) related to Ireland and Irish people because Notre Dame Students love these things throughout the year.  Along with Claddaugh Rings (see #6), Irish Flags (see #55), Guinness, Jameson, and Bailey’s; Notre Dame Students oftentimes like to play Celtic Rock music to make their get-togethers even more Irish.

Celtic Rock music (at least the kind that’s popular amongst Notre Dame Students) is essentially rock or punk music that includes an Irish accented singer and sometimes other instruments such as a fiddle.  Celtic Rock songs often include references to Ireland, the Catholic Church, drinking alcohol, and (strangely) the city of Boston.

While Notre Dame Students appreciate a variety of artists, their go-to Celtic Rock group is Flogging Molly.  With songs such as Drunken Lullabies and Rebels of the Sacred Heart, this band’s music can not only be heard at many student parties, but they also appear at Legend’s from time to time.  Notre Dame Students also utilize the music of Dropkick Murphy’s, as well as the soundtrack to the film The Boondock Saints.

Notre Dame Students like Celtic Rock because it helps them to pretend like they are more Irish than they really are, even if the music is made by people that aren’t really Irish (like most of Flogging Molly and all of Dropkick Murphy’s) and isn’t something that is actually enjoyed by Irish people.  Students like the style of music because it is acceptable in a variety of situations and is always great music for parties.  Because of these things Celtic Rock songs are oftentimes featured on the prototypical Notre Dame Playlist.

#73: Digger Phelps

Basketball season at Notre Dame is usually most notable because it is the end of the football season, but there are certain things about Notre Dame Basketball that are uniquely enjoyed by Notre Dame Students (at least some students).  Digger Phelps is one of those things.

Digger Phelps was the head basketball coach at Notre Dame in the 70’s and 80’s, and probably the most successful coach in the history of Notre Dame Basketball.  He holds the NCAA record for most upsets of number one ranked teams, and led the Irish to their only appearance in the Final Four in 1977.  He is the son of an undertaker.

Despite the fact that these successes occurred before current Notre Dame Students were even born, the student body likes Digger Phelps for things that have nothing to do with his coaching prowess. 

Like Lou Holtz (see #23), current Notre Dame students like Digger Phelps for his oversized personality and his appearance on the ESPN College GameDay program (the basketball version).  Similarly to Holtz, Phelps uses the program to make unreasonable predictions about how the Fighting Irish will do in their games (although unlike Holtz he is capable of picking against the Irish squad) and as a way to showcase his uncanny ability to match the color of his highlighter to the color of his necktie.

Not only do Notre Dame Students like Digger Phelps for the unnecessary publicity he brings to their basketball program, but they also like him for his willingness to make frequent appearances on campus for events ranging from pep rallies to dorm talks.  At pep rallies, he is one of the most intense speakers the university has at its disposal, and he can make the crowd overly excited even when the team’s predicament is most dire.

If his pep rallies are noted for their intensity, his dorm talks are noted for their bizarreness.  When Digger starts talking in a dorm he will seamlessly transition from talking about his life and his career in basketball to talking about his political opinions about globalization and America’s future.  While oftentimes unpredictable, these talks can be even more interesting than those of the beloved Fr. Hesburgh (see #56)

Overall, Notre Dame Students like Digger Phelps because his personality matches their zeal and his devotion to the school brings him back again and again.  Whether they see him at pep rallies, on ESPN, at dorm events, or in the bars around South Bend, Digger Phelps can excite students in a way that few personalities are able.

#67: New Football Coaches

Recent years have unfortunately seen the necessity for Notre Dame to endure five different searches for a new head football coach.  While the specific circumstances surrounding and the people conducting each search have changed over the years, they have all (quite obviously) followed a period of failure and disappointment on the football field.

Because of the various perspectives of these failures, different groups within the Notre Dame community have different opinions of the coaching searches and of the men that are subsequently hired from these searches.  Old Alums (especially the overly fanatical message board crowd) are oftentimes angry and upset with new hires because these men do not fall under their arbitrary and unreachable ‘Tier 1’ designation.  These people make outlandish and unsubstantiated claims based on their ‘inside information’ (see #8) and choose to continue their never-ending pessimism about the football program.

Young alums that personally witnessed all of the failures and disappointment that brought about the need for a coaching change are expectedly skeptical of the new coach.  While these former students are hopeful for a more successful future, they all remember how excited they were when the last coach was hired.  They remember the short lived ‘Return to Glory’ of Tyrone Willingham and the ‘Hard-working, intelligent, and nasty’ football teams of Charlie Weis. 

These young alums are skeptical because they can clearly remember a time before the last coach failed; a time when they were students and hanging Sports Illustrated covers on their dorm room walls.  They remember a time when the departed coach was the new coach, and they loved him.

This is because Notre Dame Students LOVE new football coaches.

When a new coach is hired, Notre Dame Students brim with excitement and unbridled optimism.  They dreamily look towards the upcoming season knowing that there will be better results on the field and certain that the coach will lead them to the Promised Land.  They update their Facebook statuses, listen to press conferences, and start thinking of sayings for custom T-Shirts they will sell the following fall (see #35).

Notre Dame Students love new football coaches because they represent the possibility to wake up the echoes and return Notre Dame Football to its previous years of glory.  New football coaches bring with them the chance to restore winning traditions (see #40) and the ability to give the current classes a chance to witness a long lost level of success.

Now, Brian Kelly represents that chance; and until he loses his first game every Notre Dame Student will love him.

#55: Hanging Irish Flags

Almost all Notre Dame Students like to claim they have some sort of Irish heritage no matter where their family actually comes from.  These students live for St. Patrick’s Day (well, who doesn’t), they have several albums by Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly (even though those bands come from Boston and LA respectively), they care deeply about the direction of their Claddagh Rings (see #6), they sip Baileys to help them fall asleep, and they do whatever it takes to get into the Dublin study abroad program (or they enter the Saint Mary’s program).  The one thing that all of these students are sure to do, however, is hang an Irish Flag in their dorm room or apartment.

While there is nothing wrong with hanging Irish Flags, these flags are as ubiquitous in Notre Dame Student’s rooms as sweatpants, Rudy posters, and spooning (see #49, #30, and #27).  It would be nearly impossible to walk down a hall of any dorm on campus and not see several of these flags draped across the walls of rooms.

Many students take the flag craze to the next level and work to complement their Irish flag with other flags.  Some rooms will have flags of their state next to an Irish flag.  Other rooms will have Notre Dame Flags next to their Irish Flag.  While the types of flags may vary (including Cubs W flags, Premiere League team flags, and unfortunately some Confederate flags), most students use some sort of flag combination to decorate their rooms because the flags are somewhat easy to hang, take up a lot of space, and don’t show wear and tear in the same way that posters do.

Whatever the case may be, Notre Dame Students love to hang their Irish flags so that everybody can know how Irish they are (or wish that they were), and so that the walls will have more clutter and character (similar to a Bennigan’s) that clearly defines the occupants of the room as one thing: a Notre Dame Student.

#6: Claddaugh Rings

While Notre Dame Students do not wear a massive amount of jewelry, they do love to sport two types of rings.  Aside from Class Rings, the women of Notre Dame (and Saint Mary’s of course), love to wear Claddaugh Rings. 

For those who aren’t familiar, the Claddaugh Ring is a traditional Irish ring that is made up of two hands that encompass a heart.  As tradition has it, women wear Claddaugh rings in different ways depending on what their current relationship status is. 

If the ring is worn on the right hand with the heart facing out, it means that the wearer is not currently in a relationship.  If the ring is turned around, it means that the wearer’s heart has been pledged to somebody.  When the ring bearer moves the ring to her left hand, then it means they are engaged or married depending on which direction the heart is facing.

Notre Dame Women love to wear Claddaugh Rings not only to show off their Irish heritage (or wanted Irish heritage), but also to tell everybody what their current relationship status is.  Claddaugh Rings were like the facebook profile of the 14^th century; when men see them, they are able to immediately discern the availability status of the wearer. 

Notre Dame Women further like Claddaugh Rings because of the invigorating thrill involved with turning the ring around.  When a Woman has the opportunity to turn her ring around, she has won victory by achieving the great objective of all Notre Dame Women: A Long Term Relationship. 

Women who do not wear Claddaugh Rings are considered by men to be unavailable because they are either a) going to join the sisterhood, or b) lesbian.  These women must be avoided by Notre Dame Men at all costs.