Ah, February. It’s that time of year where everyone starts asking you where you’re going to live next year. As a sophomore, I am not obligated to live in a dorm again, although I am still planning on it because looking for and living in an apartment involves a lot of ~Adulting~ that I’m not ready to try out yet. Since I’ve spent so much time in college dorms, I started considering what I like and don’t like about dorm life. I feel like on-campus students have a love-hate relationship with dorms: although living on campus has a lot of pros, like giving you the opportunity to live away from your parents, and being only a short walk away from your friends–dorms leave a lot to be desired. I compiled a list of things that I’ve found to be less than ideal about dorm life, specifically at Emory:
1. Being screwed when you forget your ID or key…and your phone
A lot of people keep their IDs attached to phones in a phone wallet, and our phones go almost everywhere with us, don’t they? But sometimes you just forget to bring them, and you have to wait for someone to come by and let you in. This situation can be even worse when you’ve left your key and phone in the room, you’ve just gone to shower, and your roommate left and locked up.
2. Speaking of bathrooms, the clumps of hair that you find literally EVERYWHERE
I wish that I didn’t know the feeling of stepping on a furry ball of hair next to the drain. Also, sorry honey, no one wants to see your interpretation of van Gogh’s The Starry Night on the shower walls. I get that hair comes out when you wash it, but do you really have to put it on the wall!?
Please pick up your hair, ladies. Use a paper towel or something.
3. Window blinds that simultaneously do their job well and don’t do it well enough
You would think that keeping the blinds closed would prevent the sun from beaming in your face when you’re in bed, but it really doesn’t. It just wakes you up while keeping your room dim and depressing. But leaving them open can make you feel pretty exposed, especially if you live on a lower-level floor (special thanks to the Netflix show You for making us all paranoid).
Also, dorm window sills aren’t very ideal if you want to keep plants around and alive. If you’re at an optimal location, your plant might get a couple of hours of sunlight, if even that.
4. The belltower, that super peppy song…
I don’t know if you can hear them where you live, but I can hear them loud and clear from my dorm. If it wasn’t for the fact that they act as my alarm clock in the morning (I don’t even have to open my eyes to look at the time—I just count how many dings there are at the end of the song), I swear that I would have written an angry email to someone by now.
5. Noisy neighbors
You can’t even really do anything about this one, because sometimes you don’t know where the sounds are coming from. Even if you do, it’s not easy to convince yourself to go tell the neighbors to quiet down. Not only do you want to avoid making enemies with the people you live with, but you’ll never be sure if your intervention will be effective. Sometimes, it’s just easier to try and tune it out.
6. All of your friends living in the same dorm except for you
It’s not ideal for everyone to come to your dorm because it’s more convenient for everyone to meet up at theirs, so you’re the one who has to make that trip every time. This is especially annoying when it’s late at night and you have to go back home by yourself.
At the end of the day, there is no other time in your life where you will live within a mile radius of your classes and all of your closest friends, so it’s really worth all of our while to make the most of dorm life despite the things that we hate about it.