decor

While it may seem impossible to replicate the campus experience, many of us pull up pictures of our favorite spots and replay old videos when we’re feeling nostalgic. Alternatively, for a truly immersive experience, let your sense of smell come into play and introduce familiar scents to intensify your flashbacks. Here are 12 popular scents to conjure up a vivid image of your college lifestyle.

It’s that time of the year again—along with the chill of October, hints of yellow and red are starting to tint the greenery of Morningside Heights—and maybe your dorm room is starting to feel a little dingy. Maybe those $8 posters from the poster man on the corner of 116th and Broadway aren’t enough to lift the gloom of your suite. Do not fear! A simple solution will do the trick: a low-maintenance plant is the magical touch your living space needs.

The stressful season of housing selection is finally over, but that also means you are now facing a blank slate for room décor in the fall. Scrambling on Pinterest to find the right vibe for your future room? Overwhelmed by the collection of tapestries and wall art on Society6? Spectrum’s got you covered. Whether you are going for the minimalist aesthetic, the laid-back vibe, the alternative style, or the natural organic look, we have picked out some of the staples that will spice up your dorm affordably!

Considering it's still the first week of NSOP, your room should be in relatively good condition. (Relative [adj]: The sock drawer is still made up of only socks while very few Cheez-Its have been crushed into processed powder on the floor. That'll last two weeks tops.)

Are your McBain walls still looking a little barren? We've got your guy. Michael Wells and his wife, Helenia, sell every poster a college kid could ever want on 116th Street and Broadway. Unfortunately, he's had some trouble with the police lately.more According to the News desk, long before Wells starting selling posters, he followed the Jazzmobile around the Upper West Side and Harlem selling postcards of jazz artists. Nowadays he just posts himself right in front of the Columbia gates.

Dear Decorator of This Room, Can you decorate my room, too? Thanks, Amin P.S. Actually, I'm just kidding.more Let me explain. I take perverse pride in the fact that my rooms since freshman year have been, without question, the most boring rooms in the history of Columbia University. And so I sublimate my spatial inferiority complex into a belief that my room reifies my me-ness and allows me to participate in room discourses by representing me in my own terms and in defiance of the hegemony constructed by the well decorated-room Other. Look at your room. It's beautiful. It really is. Look at that poster of a fireplace! Who would've thought of putting that there? That's genius. I mean, I've always thought there's nothing like walking into an empty dorm room on your first day (back) at Columbia. There's 100 square feet of endless possibility. Where are you going to put your bed? Your desk? Your chest of drawers? Your movable steel shelf things? You, clearly, have made the most of your little world of possibilities. I, on the other hand, never do. The first thing I do is put my desk facing the window (assuming I have a good view). The layout of the rest of my room then becomes a matter of fitting in the rest of the furniture in such a way that works. I then arrange my books on the shelves, dump my clothes in the closet, throw other essentials in random places, put up a Japanese flag, and voilà! My room is fully decorated. I guess I could do a better job with decorating my room, but I have several reasons not to: