They say the most fun years of your life are in college. And your living situation, including location and roommates, has a major factor to the memories you will make in those 4 years.
Although not many people can say this, I have had a great living experience every single year of college thus far.
Yes, I know I got lucky. You hear horror stories all the time about the roommate who leaves their half-eaten pizza box laying around for weeks or who stays up till 5 a.m. partying. Or the apartment that just happens to be right next to the train tracks.
But lucky for me, I have had four years of easy living.
Freshman year at East Carolina University, you are required to live in an on-campus dorm. To some, this may sound awful. And in the beginning, it did to me too. But my freshman year in the dorms was the perfect starting year that I could have asked for.
My sophomore and junior years were spent in an apartment complex downtown. Great location, close to campus (but more importantly, close to downtown) and I lived with all of my best friends!
Now that I am in my senior year, I live in a house. Here at ECU, there's a little neighborhood of houses rented out by college students that we like to call "the grid."
The house that I live in this year has given me the best college memories in one semester than any of my previous years.
There is something about just having a house to call your own with all of your friends at this period of our lives. For my roommates and I, our little house is the one place we can come home to after a long day of classes or a drunken night out at the bar and feel safe and relaxed.
Our house is also the feeling of home to all of our closest friends. The comfortableness they feel to walk into the house unannounced, help themselves to the kitchen, and crash at the place after a long movie night is what makes this house feel so much like home.
The countless nights we spend just sitting on our living room floor just talking and laughing until the sun rises are moments that will carry with me long past college.
And don't get me wrong, behind all the giggling and hanging out, our house has its faults. The houses in this part of Greenville are older houses with older appliances. The stove looks like it's from the 1950's, there is no garbage disposal, and the laundry dryer squeaks so loud I can barely hear myself think. But these are the things that make the house what it is and I wouldn't have it any other way.
No matter what happens, the house that my best friends and I get to call ours for the last year of college is one that I'll remember forever. I will all come back years from now and remember the house that I love; the people, the memories, the squeaky dryer, and all.
