College freshman assigned the same dorm room her mom had 33 years ago

Jul 23, 2023

As Laura Everett Bowling walked through a residence hall at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, this month, she took stock of all the things that looked the same.

The 51-year-old had lived there during her first year of college starting in the fall of 1990. Being there again, Bowling noticed an inset in a wall where there once was a pay phone that students used to call home. Beside her old room, there was still a window with a ledge where she and her friends would sit for group photos.

And then there was her room itself, which looked nearly identical, save for updated furniture. It was her first visit there in 33 years — for her daughter’s move-in day. Laura and Sarah Bowling, 18, discovered they would share the same freshman-year room number when the school sent out assignments last month, though the chance of that happening was less than one percent.

“I’m just really happy that she’s going to experience so many of the same things that I loved,” Laura said.

As Sarah moved in this month, her mom pointed out all the places where she’d made memories, recounting the beginnings of her collegiate career.

“There’s something special about that because it’s all the exact same as when my mom was here,” Sarah said.

Laura, who graduated in 1994, grew up in the Cincinnati area and knew she wanted to go to Miami University since she was in seventh grade.

A family friend who had graduated from the school had taken Laura and a couple friends to the campus. Laura gazed at the towering brick buildings, toured a campus dorm and strolled around uptown, where the popular bars and restaurants were.

After her older brother began attending the school, Laura went to its “Lil’ Sibs Weekend” in the late 1980s. The event, she said, “sealed the deal.”

“I just felt right then and there, this is where I want to go,” Laura said.

And she did, moving into a room in Emerson Hall, one of Miami University’s first-year dorms.

While Laura was moving in during the fall of 1990, her parents snapped the first of many photos of her in the dorm. She sat on her bed, positioned near the window. A wooden picture frame, a white teddy bear and black milk crates she’d brought during the move fill the background of the photo. She’d also brought a Smith Corona word processor, which many of the other dorm residents, who were all women at the time, borrowed to type their papers.

Laura quickly made friends across her floor — especially the students who lived across from her, whom she called “across-the-hall roommates.”

She said she never really felt homesick, and the one time she did, her dad drove about 40 minutes to visit her, with flowers and sweets in tow.

Over the years, Laura forgot her sophomore year dorm room number and her addresses from the last two years at the school, but she always remembered her exact freshman year room, her first home at Miami University.

“I had such good memories,” she said.

The love for Miami University only continued when Laura started her own family, still in the Cincinnati area.

Sarah visited the campus from a young age, watching her brother compete in swim meets at the school, eating at Laura’s favorite restaurants from college and walking around the campus, just as her mother did in middle school.

And like her mom, Sarah felt a connection.

“I just think it’s the most beautiful place,” Sarah said. “And I instantly felt at home here.”

Sarah was at camp without her cellphone for a few days in July when Miami University’s room assignments came out.

“I got some super fun crazy news!!!!!!!” Laura wrote in a July 12 text, asking Sarah to call her.

On the bus ride home after camp, Laura got to deliver the news. She recalled hearing her daughter screaming through the phone: “I got my mom’s dorm room!”

“Did you request it?” Sarah recalled her friends asking.

They hadn’t. It was a random room assignment, with odds of 1 to 1,099, according to John Bailer, a professor emeritus of statistics at Miami University.

The Bowlings saw the dorm room together on Aug. 23, when Sarah moved in.

“I think I was still trying to process, ‘Oh I’m moving in,’” Sarah said. “But for her, she was reliving what she had already lived before.”

As they walked through the hallways and started bringing boxes into the room, Laura pointed out all the spots where she’d taken the photos in scrapbooks she’d shown her daughter for years. The pair decorated the room, replicating the Western theme Sarah had at home to help it feel familiar.

So far, the freshman hasn’t felt homesick. But if she does, she knows her mom will make the roughly 40-minute drive to see her. And there’s one other thing Sarah has that Laura didn’t — knowing that her mom had lived in the same spot.

“I can think about that, and I can be like, ‘My mom did so great,’” she said. “And I can do it, too.”