Looking back on it now, freshman dorms might have sucked but only because it was such a new experience. Most people have never lived with a roommate before and it is a very different lifestyle.
Here are some of the things that make it hard:
1. Not Knowing The Person
It’s hard to walk into a room on the first day of college and see someone else in your room, with all of their things set up and your half/space in the room is bare. I thought I knew my roommate from texting over the summer going into freshman year but that first night was completely different from texting.
2. Getting Used to Their Habits
Having an 8 a.m. and not trying to wake up your sleeping roommate is one of the hardest things you will ever do. Especially when the blinds are closed and there are no lights on. You get really good at remembering to set your things out the night before though and finding your routine of where all your stuff is in the dark.
3. Trying Not To Piss Them Off
You have no idea what will trigger your roommate into a fight. It could be the smallest things or it could be nothing. But until you hit that point or say the wrong thing, you will never know if you will hit a nerve or not.
4. There's No Privacy
Hopefully you have a roommate like mine was and she doesn’t bring anyone back and not tell you about them. However, if you’re not lucky, my saddest apologies to you people, you need to establish some guidelines as roommates regarding who can come over and when and honestly just be open because no one wants to walk into something they don’t want to see.
5. Communal Bathrooms
Communal bathrooms suck because you have to walk all the way there and if you really have to pee, that sucks. But also, it’s just kind of creepy because in the middle of the night when you have to go, you sit in bed for a second trying to decide if it’s that big of a deal or not. And then when you decide you have to go, you have to go into the dark hallway and run to the bathroom before the monster gets you just like when you were five.
But aside from those five things, there is one huge thing I loved about living in the freshman dorms. There is a community environment that I loved and still love to this day. Being forced to go down the hall to the bathroom was subtly the best thing for all of us. Because some days you would walk to the bathroom and have an hour long conversation with some random person you ran into in the hallway. You had a reason to go out of your room other than to just go to class. You had to do things outside your room, which means you had to interact with people.
I made my best friends in my hallway last year and I could not be more thankful. The first week we played cards together because we all happened to be out there. And now, playing cards is just one of the many things we do as a group. So, give it a chance, you won’t have the same community experience after freshman year. Be thankful for it and notice who you notice and make friends with new people. You never know how those connections will help you later on.
