Before I had come to university, I had been living at home while attending classes at a community college. I prepared all my meals myself and I worked full-time. Of course, in my first classes of college, I had my ups and downs, but I worked through it and I left my community college with a high GPA. It also helped that I knew of people before transferring here and I was able to make more friends through them within a couple of weeks. I also found amazing friends through our Facebook Transfer page and other social media.

Coming to university I had planned on getting an apartment for cheap but then I realized I had no idea of the area and, knowing me, I would choose one of the worst apartments not even realizing what I had done. Thus I signed up to live in the dorms.

Originally when I moved in, I signed up to room with another girl from another community college near my area that I didn't know very well but thought had similar values to me, and we were placed in a dorm that we were told was for upperclassmen. However, when we moved in, we were placed in a hall that majority were freshmen and then a small number of upperclassmen who kept to themselves.

I also discovered that although we were the same age and from a similar background, there really was a huge gap with my roommate in life experience, job experience, and overall experience being independent and living alone. We lacked the same morals and realized we were indeed too different from each other to have any sort of personal connection so it was difficult to live together or accomplish anything regarding our room.

I found myself more attracted to spending time with people of my own age who had experienced growing up outside of this university and had passions for their future. I found the more and more I spent time making other friends my own age, the more I felt distant from the people I lived around and with.

I felt like I couldn't relate to their problems as I had already gone through a lot of my freshman year experiences at home. I still loved to talk to them but when hearing the stories of their first-year experiences, I just couldn't feel like I could relate.

Entering the second semester, my first roommate left and I was roomed with a freshman roommate whom I've grown to love. However, it was at this point in the year that majority of my friends were starting to branch off and work towards things that made them passionate and there's nothing wrong with that.

I supported them and their dreams but at the same time, I wanted something to be passionate about. I longed to find more people my own age and maybe find more people within my own major that I can relate to about my classes. I wanted the passion that all my friends were working towards and to be apart of something else that I could put my heart into.

Thus, I found myself joining a Fraternity and I've met some of the best people I could find. I've opened up about how I've felt being older in the dorms and found that a lot of people relate to what I've been saying. I've found that a lot of people really believe the dorms are a place to learn through your Freshman year and for upperclassmen it's more of just a place to live.

Overall, the dorms haven't been a bad experience for me. However, I'm ready to move into my own space and live with people my own age.