Adam Simon has lived in some places.

Tuxedo Park, Calgary, AB – $485/month (1999-2001) A month after graduating high school, I moved out of my parents’ home and bounced around for half a year before I found this apartment on Calgary’s Centre Street. I sublet a room in a house with five other girls, which was awful and lasted a month. I rented a room in a kitchen-less basement with my cousin, which was even more awful and lasted only two months. I had my own basement suite in a house with a snoopy landlady that snuck in and rifled through my closet. But this, my first real apartment, was perfect! It was a simple one-bedroom (bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bath) in a small 12-suite apartment complex I found in the newspaper’s classifieds. It was on a main street that was close to everything I loved: my family, my boyfriend, my job, my friends, everything.

I loved living alone and this was the perfect starter apartment for a 19-year-old. The building manager was awesome and even once drove over to let me back into my suite after I locked myself out when I’d gone downstairs to grab my laundry, leaving me sitting sadly in the hallway wearing my pajamas until he showed up. And the other tenants were either helpful (giving my car jumpstarts when I’d forget to plug it in overnight in winter) or invisible. I still miss this place.

Where have you lived, Andrew Moseman?

Leela Rice has lived in some places.

Chung’s Dorm, Groton, Mass., (Room and board)
I was the last resident to move into this slim triple at the end of the downstairs hall, so I got the top bunk and the awkward desk. The phone was right outside our room. I tried to avoid it, as there was not much good news to report.

It seems like all of the places I’ve lived, to a certain degree, have been about a combination of making the space my own and trying not to care about what people think, while I work on carving out a life that I believe in and actually only needs to feel good to me.

Where have you lived, Jia Tolentino?

Where have you lived, Nora Cobo?

Tyler Street, Boston, Mass. $450 This place always smelled like chicken fingers, and we had an ex-con with gangrene in his ankle who slept on our couch. My entire stay—from the day my terrified mom dropped off my record collection to the unceremonious and not-entirely-explained eviction notice—was a depraved vacation between novelty shop jobs during that whole post-9/11-malaise phase we all went through.

In 2000, I moved to New York City for college, and into a tiny dorm room with two other girls in Brooklyn Heights. (My school was on the Upper East Side. That was a hell of a commute.) This experience spoiled me, because Brooklyn Heights is one of the prettiest areas in all of New York City, and ever since then, I've fantasized about living in one of the buildings along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.