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Anyone live or used to live on campus/dorms???

jam uh weezy

jam uh weezy

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How ddid/do you like it? is it much different than living off campus? were you used to the area beforehand or did you transfer out of your comfort zone? share any and everything you think is relevant...


Next fall i will be transferring to a new school, and living on campus. i can get along with pretty much anyone, but i'm not a big fan of alcohol and that seems to be what most college kids like to do on the weekends. also the area i'm going too is not really big city like i'm used too, no more clubbing it up in hollywood on the weekends. lots of house parties of course... there will be lots of other "fun stuff" i know that, but it seems like the whole social atmosphere of campus life revolves around alcohol and getting "fucked up". im kind of over that haha. i like to still do that, but just starting college when i was 21 i'm taking my studies pretty seriously.

i dunno whatever just talk about dorms and all that :)
 
I was required to live in the dorms my freshman year of undergrad, but I was 18. You're right, a lot of campus culture revolves around alcohol but that is not to say that EVERYONE is doing it. I'm sure you'll make friends with like-minded people who don't like to get fucked up all the time.

That being said, once I finished my year in the dorms I got the hell outta there. I didn't like all the constraints on my freedom, lack of privacy, and public bathrooms/showers. At least where I went to school, there was some drinking in the dorms, but people had to be quiet or else the RA's would come knocking on the door and they have master keys and can search your room without your permission. I think you'll be fine in the dorms. Like I said, you won't be the only one who takes your studies seriously. Oh yeah, and just because it's a small town doesn't mean there's not a thriving bar or club scene. I've lived in two small college towns in my life and they were much more fun than regular small towns.

Good luck.
 
i live in the dorms for two years. my freshman year i had a horrible roommate and transferred to a single dorm winter quarter. i really didn't like it much, my room was super tiny. plus the school i went to was a commuter school and most students went home on the weekends. the only social area of the entire dorm was the downstairs lobby. so most people stayed in their rooms and kept to themselves when they were around.

i transferred schools my sophomore year and lived in the dorms. i had a much better experience, i got along well with my roommate who was also a transfer student. most of the other students on my floor were either older students or transfer students too. our dorm had a large community area where we would all hang out. i studied either in my room or the library.

but dorm living has all the downsides that jerry atrick mentioned. i also imagine that younger students will bug you to buy them alcohol once they realize you are of age. we had one person who was 21 in our dorm sophomore year and he was constantly being asked to buy beer.
 
I lived in a dorm my freshman year and was about 2 hours from my hometown. It was a big city and I had to find my way around and get used to everything. Being on campus was more convenient since I didn't have a car at that time. I didn't really miss having one either because everything I needed was within walking distance anyways and parking was pretty hard to find.

As far as my roommate went, I actually knew her from high school. We both found out that we were going to the same school so we requested each other as roommates. She had a boyfriend who lived off campus and ended up spending pretty much every night at his place. I think she slept in our room maybe like 3 times. The room was small as fuck so mostly I didn't mind that she was gone all the time. I had privacy and could do whatever I wanted without having to worry about whether I was bothering my roommate. The only complaint I have looking back is that most people end up becoming good friends with their roommates and kind of having a "built in" friend. Mine was always gone so I didn't have that security that I thought I would have. If I could go back I would've just taken my chances with someone I didn't know because I feel like I almost missed out on the roommate experience in a way.

As far as the actual room goes I thought mine was small and most dorms are, but then I visted some of the schools my friends went to. Talk about living in a closet, DAMN! It's tough sharing a space that small with another person, so you will definitely want to talk about certain ground rules like whether you like to stay up late/sleep in, when you like to study, what you think about people sleeping over, etc. It's better to talk about those things before hand and just get it all out in the open.

And your right, most college kids are into drinking. A lot of them are experiencing freedom for the first time and so they can get a little wild. You're already 21, so like someone already said, if they find out I would be prepared to be asked to buy alcohol a lot. Maybe you will want to downplay you age, cuz I would think that would get a little annoying. Also, they usually have rules about drinking in dorms and you wouldn't want to get in trouble for providing alcohol to minors. I know I talked a lot about my own experience, but that's kinda what you wanted right? Anyways, I hope you like college and have a good experience.
 
I lived in a dorm my first semester and now I stay in an on campus apartment. I hate the dorms honestly, the only advantage is meeting people is pretty easy. Living with people you don't know and might not get along with is never easy and rarely fun.
 
Dorm life if pretty sweet, I'd imagine having your own place off campus would be better but its still fun. As for the drinking scene, yes its big but there are plenty of people that take their work seriously and still know how to have a good time without getting blackout drunk every week.
 
itd be hard to make friends living in the dorms if ur more aware and mature.
ur probably going to get extremely annoyed
hearing someones bass three floors up til 4 in the morning... fire alarms... food...

id get ur own place asap.

i had a fucking blast in he dorms tho lol.
but now that im 2 apts and a house away, i couldnt even imagine going back and being surrounded by freshmen.
 
Where I live, there are dorms, which are owned by the school, and regulated (crappy bandwidth caps, noise violations, etc.) These are great for freshmen who want to focus on studying, but still meet new people and engage in organized weekend activities. These are generally overpriced, and paid for by rich parents.

Then there is privately owned student housing, which tends to basically be flophouses for keg parties and general partying whenever the weather is nice. These will test the limits of your scholastic focus. ;)

Then there's off-campus housing, which is basically you living elsewhere in the city, and busing/driving to school every day. This can be a good situation if you have the right roomies.

For my first year, I moved into a quiet, off-campus apartment with my girlfriend. Her school was within walking distance, and I bused every day. It was a good situation.

2nd and 3rd year, I moved in with a family friend, paid super cheap rent and bused as well. I still partied on campus on the weekends, with the added bonus that it wasn't my house we were trashing.
 
jam uh weezy said:
How ddid/do you like it? is it much different than living off campus? were you used to the area beforehand or did you transfer out of your comfort zone? share any and everything you think is relevant...
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I didn't like it. My first dorm room was a room basically 12 by 15ft big, and there were three people in it including myself. I drew the short straw and got the top bunk. The girls I roomed with much preferred to stay up in the room drinking until four or five in the morning. They'd frequently have other people over in the room. Me having class at 9a didn't jive with their schedules (both only had classes after 3p). I ended up getting quite sick, passing out, blah blah blah, from lack of sleep.

Moved into a new room after a couple months of the above. Everything was fine and dandy for awhile but then the girl's true colors came through and she was a racist. Tried talking with student housing to get a switch (she'd go live with her black friend, her black friend's white roommate would come live with me) and res. life said that we couldn't, since "that'd be segregation." 8(

Dealt with the second roommate 'til the end of the year when I left that school and never returned. Commuted (from parent's house) to a local community college after that.

As far as going outside of my comfort zone, the school itself was outside of my comfort zone, but I got used to it. Before college, I lived in a basically all-white small town. ~6000 people in the town. The college I went to had about that many people attending, if I remember correctly, and most of them were black or Asian. Like I said though, I got used to it.


tl;dr: Roommates can suck. If I were you, I'd get an off-campus apartment, or look into dorms at your school that are strictly for older students. If you're serious about your studies, living in a freshman dorm is probably going to be hell for you and possibly detrimental to your studies unless you plan on only using your room to sleep.
 
I started university when I was 17 and I live in residence (dorms) for first year. After that, I switched to college instead of university but I would NOT live in res again. I hated it! First, it was almost twice as expensive. I had to use a food plan and buy in the cafeteria which sucked. And I only had my room! And the bathroom was shared with fifteen other girls (two toilets, three showers). It sucked? To put it nicely! lol

Ummm I would recommend off campus housing. Cheaper, nicer house, you get a house instead of a room, you can make your own food, you can have friends over (at uni we weren't allowed to have people stay overnight).
 
You might find that you enjoy it but honestly most don't unless they're Freshmen or have never been away from home at all ever before.

I didn't enjoy living in a dorm and most people I know who went to a university or college and lived in one, did not either.

Yes you will encounter drunk loud people but that's part of attending a college/university. You're going to encounter them even if you live off campus.

Agree with Jerry about small college/university towns having a thriving club/bar scene. I went to school in the middle of nowhere in a rural area and I also found the bar/club scene to be way more fun than when living in a regular small town.

I never went to frat parties except for one summer when I went to look at a university after my freshman year of high school. I didn't really like them but I know some people who did.

I lived in a dorm for one semester when I was 20 and I had transfered to another university and after that I just lived off campus and it was a lot better living off campus.

I was supposed to have a roommate when I lived in a dorm but I lucked out and didn't have one at all.

I didn't mind the public showers but I didn't like the dining areas how they're only open at certain times and can be very expensive. You might have a microwave in your dorm room but you don't have a stove or anything else that you can cook with and you may have a tiny fridge.

Dorms are supposed to have quiet hours/times but most really don't at all unless you have a very strict RA or it's the daytime. RA's can search your room or enter it for any reason. I never smoked while living in the dorm but people would just do that outside and not indoors.

As for drinking I did some of that while living in a dorm but I never got majorly trashed I'd just get buzzed on a shot or drink a beer if someone offered me one or two. I remember one kid on my floor had a party in his dorm and just had 4-5 people in there all night just drinking and listening to loud music and then they all puked in the bathroom and in the hallway.

Having a neighbor that plays very loud DnB (drum and bass) music at 3-4AM while he's trying to bang his girlfriend and you have class at 9AM isn't fun, and I remember people would chat on AIM late at night and turn the IM response sound way up.

I did mostly all of the studying/reading in the library or if that was closed I'd just read in my dorm room.

It was easy to meet people while living in the dorms but you can do that anywhere at a college/university.

At the university I went to there are dorms where you can live where there's supposedly no alcohol alowed at all in there.
 
At the university I went to there are dorms where you can live where there's supposedly no alcohol alowed at all in there.
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My freshman year was the same way, although this rule was universally ignored. Some floors of my building, the Resident Assistants themselves were the people who acquired the alcohol (since basically everybody else in the dorms was under 21).

It will be really really loud though. I had neighbors that did nothing but take Adderall, drink energy drinks and Mountain Dew and play video games 24/7. Never went to class, never went to parties, just played video games constantly. They also had an extremely loud surround sound system which they used for the video games and it was always at full blast.
 
dorms are just a really extreme diverse comminity of people tht are just not realizing they can do whatever they want.

haha
most of it isnt very apealing to the people that have already been through it.
 
I apologize for not reading the posts in this thread yet, but I lived in a dorm for two years, and then had an on-campus apartment with my own room, then the next 3 years (including senior year and MA program) I lived off campus. On-campus apartments are pricy. But living is a dorm is the most fun you'll never want to have again. You tend to share a bathroom with up in to 22 other people in my experience, and since you have roommates and all actually live in the same ROOM, you have limited privacy.

I enjoyed it when I was 18-19, I definitely recommend to people to go away to college and get the dorming experience. However, looking back, I'd never wanna do that again at this point, and I'm almost 24 now.
 
Congrats jam uh weezy. Where are you going to school?

I would recommend dorms for a few reasons. You get to meet lots of people. But I don't get teh impression you'd have a hard time with that anyway, so you might not need that advantage. Another reason why dorms are good is because you're forced to completely immerse yourself in your school's culture and surroundings, which is good to experience while you're there because it is a part of learning and trying something new.

I lived in dorms my first year of college. "lived" I guess you could say. As soon as I started to meet people I would usually go stay at their places, and I rarely slept in my dorm. It was like an expensive closet. But, I don't think I'd take back my experience of living there because the times I did have at the dorms were always good. I did make a few friends there, that led me to meeting some really important and influential people in my life.

The alcohol thing, if that's not really your thing, you might be pretty turned off by dorm life. Because it's going to probably be exactly what you think it is. A lot of 18 year olds getting drunk for the very first time, vomiting, making fools of themselves. You might be past that stage since you're in your 20s now. I remember my very first dorm (I moved into a different one after my first quarter) the girl who slept 2 feet away from me would always puke all over herself because she had no idea how to handle herself while drinking. It was pretty gross. I was kind of past that stage in my life at that point as well, I'd done all my irresponsible shit in high school (well mostly). I didn't really drink my first year of college, I was more into 'other fun stuff' as you put it, but then I guess college kinda changed all that ;) I wanted to be a part of the fun.

Another thing is... just be prepared to pretty much give up your privacy cuz you won't have any lol. If that's important to you, then dorms aren't cool. If you need a place to go to have quiet, a peaceful place to clear your head, meditate, and have a smoke, you're gonna have to go seek that out cuz it won't be home! haha. thats how i found my little sanctuary in the woods across the street for those times.

So yeah, I'd do it man but make sure you have a chill roommate! Cuz that's the only thing that'll keep you sane! You only get this experience once in your life so you might as well just immerse yourself in it I say. good luck man!
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone, even though they are generally discouraging haha. I know a little more what to expect now. I've had my own place before, I did not think about how a lot of these kids will be on their own for their first time(oh no... lol) let alone anticipate how I will be asked to buy them alcohol. Thanks for the warning!

Like you said Firefighter, the person who is my mentor suggested I try out the dorms to get the whole college experience, and I trust him a lot... I'm going to use my time as an opportunity to better my leadership skills and be a good example for the younger people as well, hopefully get them more interested in other things and activities rather than consuming alcohol/drugs. i still like getting high sometimes but only on special occasions.
also i will be selling my car, and possibly without one for a year or two so i like the idea of having almost all the necessities of a community within walking distance.

and yes, when i last visited the area there where a damn good amount of shows coming through, I was surprised to see how many artists i liked that had come through that tiny little college town. :)

not looking forward to the lack of privacy though, hopefully i have a chill roommate.

thanks again everyone!
 
barracks are sorta like em (communal living with a pile of strangers)

after you get over the lack of privacy, its fun. You meet and socialize with a tonne of people you'd never otherwise meet, make friends, and often get a bigger scoop of partying due to an expanded network of information and vague associations with someone that allow you to invite yourself.
 
NeighborhoodThreat said:
My freshman year was the same way, although this rule was universally ignored. Some floors of my building, the Resident Assistants themselves were the people who acquired the alcohol (since basically everybody else in the dorms was under 21).

It will be really really loud though. I had neighbors that did nothing but take Adderall, drink energy drinks and Mountain Dew and play video games 24/7. Never went to class, never went to parties, just played video games constantly. They also had an extremely loud surround sound system which they used for the video games and it was always at full blast.
Click to expand...

Oh brother! I would hate to have dorm neighbors like that!

I hope for your sake they failed out or didn't come back after one semester.
 
alright so my college has this full fledged apartment complex on campus, with about what...300 apartments all with 4 bedrooms. FOR EXAMPLE, my floor had 5 apartments. if you went down the row, it was an apartment full of heavy drinkers, then heavy drinkers/ mdma users (they had a strobe light, disco light with different colors, a fog machine, and techno playing with the door open on weekend nights sometimes hahaha), more mdma users, then us- (at the time, i was using cocaine and drinking A LOT, my roommate was in the midst of a benzo romance and dating an adderoll freak, my other roommate was a big weed user), then ONE apartment of generally sober residents. i cant speak for all college apartment complexes, obviously, but mine was generally a big party. one time i walked out of my apartment super twisted on mdpv, xanax, weed, and whiskey, and had a lengthy conversation with one of the on campus cops who took no action whatsoever to search me, correct me, or even ask what i was on. anyway. if you're looking for a serious study environment, maybe you should look for an apartment that is a tad bit farther from campus to avoid living in a big party apartment complex. i only say this because i think the idea of on campus apartments is a more free environment, that is less monitored by RAs than the dorms. and the apartments really close to my college are basically the same as mine.

however, on a much more encouraging note, at this same college, i lived in the dorms the first year, which were on the opposite side of campus, and had a completely different experience. we were required to check in visitors, had visitation hours, could not have overnight guests of the opposite gender, were not allowed alcohol and were given a police citation if we came in sloppy drunk from the bars, had obnoxiously thorough room inspections every 2 months, and had mandatory dorm meetings regularly.

apparantly my college is trying to satisfy both crowds. one party community on one side of campus, and one studious community on the other.

i dont live in my apartment anymore though bc i have an alcohol problem. :/
 
1) If you get a shitty roommate don't hesitate to request a re-assignment.
2) Be social, be verrrryyy social. Meet everybody you can in your building. This will help you immensely in the long run.
3) Determine your RA situation. Is he/she cool or a buttplug? Take the necessary steps from here to establish a relationship which works to your benefit.

Conclusion: Living in the dorms is all about networking (like many other things).
 
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