Life in the dorms. It's one of a kind. It's probably the only time in your life you will live with 1000 of people in your exact phase in life- going through the same Baxter hill, Bolton food, and living alone for the first time. It is people from all over the world in one building sharing elevators, community bathrooms, and the Russell market food. What a community. We live with our best friends from elementary school, complete strangers we met on Facebook, and our long distant cousin we never knew we had.

We spent high school begging to move out. We rejected our full sized bed, full sized closet, individual spaces. We hated having our own rooms with a personal motherly alarm clock and candles on our nightstands. Then we got to college. We moved into less than 200 square feet- that had to be shared- and made ourselves a home. We printed off pictures we forgot we even took. We boxed up too many throw pillows Pinterest convinced us were essential. We bought like 12 blankets on Amazon that there is just not enough room for.

The Roommate:

Every high school senior dreams of finding their "froomie"- the girl that uses the same presets and wants the same color scheme and uh seems nice! The truth is, when you haven't lived with anyone else before, you don't really know what to look for in a roommate, and these oh so perfect Instagram girls come in not knowing how to sweep.

My advice: When finding a roommate, it is important to have things in common but even more essential to be on the same page. Forget about where she got her jeans and ask about what time she likes to schedule her classes. 7:30 a.m. alarms get old really fast when your first class is at 12:20. Figure out what "bedtime" looks like. No one is here to nag you about going to bed on time, but no one is here to wake you up either. Climbing into your lofted twin bed is only so relaxing up until the point your roommate who is sooo not ready for bed comes in to do who knows what- with all the lights on. Figure out what cleaning looks like to your roommate. For some, it's a weekly clean to start off Sunday right. For others, its laundry every other day, wiping down surfaces every day, and making beds every morning. There's also the people who can't find their jeans because they took them off three weeks ago and they've been shoved under their mountain of unused outfits since Christmas. What do they think about going out, having guests, buying groceries, etc? In high school, we spend our senior year looking for college best friends and not so much someone we will be living with.

In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter how clean your room is as long as your comfortable with it and on the same page about it. No one cares about who takes out the trash more. The grocery bills get close to even from eating each other's snacks. The clothes mountain gets demolished with a trip to the laundry room. The things that are the biggest deals at the beginning of the year don't matter so much a few months in, so skip the drama and stop letting the unmade bed that isn't even yours bug you. And if it really doesn't work, it's not permanent.

The Room:

It's 200 square feet- maybe less. That's small. Very small. Your Hobby Lobby inspirational quote wall art is just not going to fit I'm sorry. However, there is plenty of room to make your space your own. Use any space you have for storage: your footrest at your futon, the shelf under your desk, the top of your closet, your car, it doesn't matter. Look for functionality over style. You may want 387 coffee cups at TJ Maxx, but you will hate every single one of them when they're dirty and you're scrubbing them in the community bathroom. Think: Less is best. You can always use your car or your home to keep clothes that are for other seasons or items you won't need access to every day. Get a futon, you'll want a place to sit that you don't have to climb into. Get organizers to make clutter look less messy. Get a vacuum, you can't just shake and sweep up the dust from your rug like your mom told you that you could. Keep your suitcases because you will want them when it's time to head home for the holidays. There are a lot of things you will swear you need that you will send home a month in.

The Dorm:

Pick the social dorm over the big one. The bigger the dorm is, the closer it is located to campus, the more friends you will meet in college that will probably live there too. You want to be in a dorm that you run into your friends in. You want to walk to the dining halls with a group instead of hoping you know someone there. You want to walk to class and not feel like you have to get in a car or a bus to be around people. You want people to walk to the sorority house with. The bigger room will be less important in the long run than these long-lasting friendships and community that you find in the bigger dorms. If you're extroverted, it's nice to have lounge areas to be around others while working or hanging out. For introverts and the lazy, you don't want to walk to the student center or the MLC to do homework. (No, you will not do it in your room.) You want a dorm that has study rooms for the times you need space but you don't want to get dressed, gather up your stuff, and try to find a study room for 30 minutes down the street. You want a group me full of people that will loan you a trash bag when you run out before you get to the store or someone to let you borrow their 70s outfit when you don't have the money to buy a costume for your date night that week. You want to be around people.

The dorms are a place of meeting friends in the elevator at 2 a.m. It's a place you will see some very gross things happen. You will watch "walks of shame" while you work on homework, you'll see a human size hole emerge from a wall that was fine the previous hour. You will see an entire game of capture the flag take place across all ten floors and all four elevators. You will see and hear so many things. Your air vent is the perfect speaker because you will hear every single song your neighbors play at full volume. This is an experience. A lofted twin bed in a 200 square foot dorm room has never been more worth it.