<p>Well, I don't know a thing. DD just got her assignment- the 17th floor. Considering she listed her priority for dug-free/no smoking, as did a friend of hers, and they wound up on different (very) floors, I can't help but wonder. If anyone here knows who's who and what's what, either from personal or reliable second hand experience, I imagine sharing would be meaningful not only to this anxious parent but many in the future.</p>
<p>Oops, that’s DRUG-free… Maternal slip? This sending the kids from home must be getting to me…</p>
<p>Send a PM to glassharmonica, as she can help you out with these answers. She’s traveling right now, so it might be a week or so before she gets back to you, but I know that she will.</p>
<p>Don’t freak yet. When we toured the J dorms this spring, our guide said that the floors can change based on need and requests. Perhaps a lot of students requested substance free and so they needed more floors. My D is going to Oberlin and they have similar policies. You can request all girl, co-ed, substance free, etc. Dorm assignments are made after all requests have been made and the need is known. </p>
<p>Thanks, Mezzo’sMama & Scubachick. We’ll learn as we go… But I can’t help wanting to know all there is… :-S </p>
<p>I’m pretty sure my daughter lived on the 17th floor. I don’t think it was much different from the other floors. I got your PM but I’ll answer here openly in case others wonder. The school is very small to begin with and many student move off campus after freshman year, so there are many freshman (relative to others) to place in dorm slots. The floor plans are pretty similar. You will find some drug users and drinkers, but fewer than in other types of college. What specifically is your concern about the floor?</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the PM and post here. I was most concerned about whether the smoke-free/drug-free was honored. I do have rather sheltered kids when it comes to such things, and the Big Apple is, well, faraway.
And yes, so good to have you back, glassharmonica. 
</p>
<p>I think it would be very difficult to smoke in the dorms. However, the outdoor area outside the cafeteria “the Rose Walk” generally has a lot of smoking dancers (weird, huh?) There is some drug use, but it’s rare among musicians and far less, from what I can see, from what you find at other kinds of universities. </p>
<p>Smoking dancers? A good name for a novel, but not such a good idea…
I suppose DD will live and learn. It’s called the BIG apple for a reason. ;
</p>
<p>The Lincoln Center campus can be sort of a bubble (which is why students often want to move off-campus.) You can go for weeks without really leaving the immediate area. At the orientation for parents (which, by the way, was the best I’ve ever attended!) the dean and president made a great case for urging students to get out of the practice room and experience the incredible tapestry of New York.</p>
<p>@ 205 mom-
Speaking on a more broad front, having gone to a school in NYC, and also knowing more than a bit about the Juilliard environment, despite the image of the ‘big bad city’, the experience of going to college in NYC is not that much different than any other college (with the exception of some closely controlled religious schools)…Basically, your D would see a lot of things no matter where she went to school, drugs and alcohol are as common at a small LAC as they are at a huge private university. In some ways, I would argue that being in a place like NYC, the temptations can be less, simply because there is so much to do. There are a lot of schools located in more rural, isolated areas where the party culture is a large part of things to do, where frat parties and the like dominate things, with NYC or other city areas/big college towns there are so many things for the kids to do it isn’t quite as prevalent IME. One of the things common in almost any school is that some kids coming in, tasting freedom for the first time, can go overboard, but especially with music that isn’t going to last, too much is put on the kids by their teachers and they IME soon face reality. </p>
<p>The other thing to keep in mind is with the practicing required (and I don’t know what your D is doing, which instrument/voice or whatever), one of the things that can create a bubble is that the load is such that it can be hard, especially with freshman adjusting to what for many is a very different experience, to have that much time to get into trouble, it is why they encourage kids to get out and explore outside the world of Juilliard because it is so easy to get locked into it as a bubble, as GH said. </p>
<p>As far as the dancers smoking, that is as old as the hills, the SAB kids, like most classically trained dancers, are under incredible pressure to lose weight and keep it off (watching them eat in the cafeteria was painful), and a lot of them think smoking will do that for them…</p>
<p>Yep, agree completely with musicprnt as regards to going to college in NYC vs. small towns and rural areas (also with him re: many ballet dancers preferring smoking to eating - unfortunately, it was ever thus).</p>
<p>I don’t know what to say about the misguided starving dancers…</p>
<p>DD is a healthy pianist as she leaves home. may she stay thus. #:-S </p>
<p>Ballet dancers often smoke because it keeps their weight down. Pretty stupid, I know, but they think they “make up” for it by gulping bee pollen!</p>
<p>Generally speaking, it’s the European instrumentalists who smoke.</p>