After a freshman year of eating nothing but pizza, burgers and Chick-fil-A, sharing a small room with a strange person who sleeps half a dozen feet from you and communal bathrooms, most folks are ready to move out. I decided to give it another shot — and you should, too.
Since I first moved into the room back in the fall of 2013 I was sure I’d end up living in an apartment somewhere. But, four school years of living on one side of a room a casual stroll away from some key campus locations later, I have to say, it’s turned out pretty well.
As many campus dwellers would attest, there are a couple big obstacles to overcome to survive living on campus. First among them is surviving roommate interaction. Despite my desperate attempts to get friends to stay on campus as roommates, I’ve somehow managed to secure a different random roommate every year.
Some years went great, and others I made it through, but in each case a certain sage advice was proven clear: “You don’t need to like your roommate, you just need to live with them.” With some good ground rules and a little luck it’s certainly manageable.
The next hurdle, of course, takes some careful planning and perhaps a little cooking expertise to overcome. While campus certainly has a nice number of options for food, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner on campus seven days a week takes you through the variety really quick.
Surviving is all about rotating where you eat and stocking up on soup, Ramen and sandwiches to throw in just for the sake of variety. Apart from the likely health concerns, a semester of eating nothing but Rev’s will make you not want to think of burgers ever again.
As many with big families can attest, having to share bathrooms is the worst. Be it coordinating shower times, the theft of toilet paper or a mosquito infestation a little bit of communication goes a long way to smoothing out restroom woes.
If you can overcome these obstacles you too can discover the true benefits of living on campus. In the end it’s the small things that really count, a stable Internet connection, seemingly unlimited warm shower water, and no heat, water or Internet bills are some nice places to start.
Easy and convenient access to food — if admittedly expensive — is a nice bonus to living next to the nexus of bus routes running through the city. A dorm acts as an obvious base of operations to work from and return to throughout the day, and the potential for afternoon naps is unrivaled.
Overall, while it’s tempting to leave campus in search of something better, once you leave there is no coming back. The commute times, required shopping trips and year long leases turn into some big downsides, unforeseen in the excitement of getting your own place.
While staying on campus may not be for everyone, I personally will take that extra hour of sleep over being off campus every day of the week.
Josh Hopkins is a history and political science senior and SciTech editor for The Battalion