Let’s be honest: the freshman dorms can be super awkward. Not only do you have to worry about making friends, but you have to deal with peoples living habits and seeing them up close and personal 24/7. My freshman dorm experience was far from ordinary. I lived in a girls’ only dorm on Cook/Douglass with girls who were mostly strong feminists of various nationalities. It was an extremely diverse place to live – especially for someone like myself who was coming from a small, all-white, mostly Christian high school.
Throughout the year I witnessed some pretty strange things ranging from a girl who kept a pet squirrel in a box under her bed that then got loose in the dorm, to a girl that flooded the bathroom because, due to her religion, she needed to pray in water – why she didn’t just fill the bathtub that was in the bathroom still confuses me to this day.
Needless to say, making friends was hard. I mostly hung out with my roommate and her friend from down the hall, but they weren’t really my style. They were into studying languages and watching French movies while I was more about listening to music and going outside for runs. It wasn’t until about two weeks into the year that I met one of my best college friends. I was in the bathroom at about 2 a.m. washing out a shirt that I had spilt coffee when I girl came in, looked at me like I had four heads, and then walked out.
The next day I was reading in my room when I heard a loud knock at my door. I opened up to see who it was and, what do you know, it was the girl from the bathroom. She said, “I didn’t know anyone else in this place stayed up past 10PM. What’s your name?” and just like that we started hanging out. We are extremely different people with extremely different opinions about almost everything, but, two years later, we are still friends. In fact, she is practically the only person I still talk to from my freshman year dorm.
We mostly ended up hanging out so much because we were both hell-bent on avoiding our roommates. Whenever my roommate was around, I would escape to her room and vice versa. While my roommate and I were on the same page as far as cleanliness went, we could not have been any more different when it came to everything else. She would constantly have her 26 year-old boyfriend sleep over and even locked me out of the room once while I was sick so she could have to room alone with him – not cool. I was forced to hide out in my friends’ room for hours. My real question was: why is a twenty-six year-old hanging out in a freshman dorm when he had an apartment they could go to? Basically, I did not enjoy getting lockout out.
I did not love my freshman roommate, but she taught me how to deal with living with someone and how to cope with difficult situations.
I suppose, overall, my experience in the freshman dorms really was ordinary. After all, the point of living in the dorms your freshman year is to meet different people, expand your horizons, and learn more about yourself during the process. I definitely did that. I would never want to go back to living in my freshman dorm but the experience definitely shaped my path in college. I met one of my best friends and learned a lot about how to deal with difficult and interesting people. To all of you out there living in the freshman dorms, I wish you the best! It may be a bumpy ride but it will be one you will look back on for the rest of your college life!
