"Dad, how do I get electricity in my apartment?"
"I have no furniture. I need to buy a bed and bookshelves and a dresser...dang."
Adulting is hard. College is hard. When you live on campus you have the luxury of putting off some of those adulting responsibilities at least for a little while. On campus, you don't have to worry about paying rent, electricity, cable or internet. It's all part of your room and board package. When you make the decision to move off campus many of those responsibilities fall on you to take care of. It's a rush of emotions.
Living on campus there are rules that everyone has to follow (or at least attempt to make it look like they follow). Quiet hours are a godsend for those of us who aren't night owls, wet and dry buildings and room checks are all part of the residential experience. You don't fully appreciate the rules until you don't have them anymore. When you move away and those rules are gone it is both freeing and terrifying. You no longer have the rules of on campus living but neither do those around you. Late at night as you fall asleep to the sounds of children playing outside your window (seriously, these kids should be in bed by 11 but I'm not one to judge) you begin to appreciate the ability to call campus security to ask people to quiet down. There are community rules but they're much different than on-campus rules. If you break one it doesn't impact your academic career, it impacts whether or not you're kicked out of your apartment. It's scary. You're constantly afraid of violating your lease for something little. You have to wait for the cable company to set up your high-speed internet so your Netflix binges are at an all time low. When you finally get your WiFi hooked up it's like Christmas in May. You begin to appreciate all of the great things that on campus living afforded you.
You get cats. It's the first step in becoming a crazy cat lady. They are some of the most irritating creatures but you can't help but love them when they crawl up on you. On campus animals weren't allowed although so many people snuck them in. It's a new experience having animals around but it's exciting because even if you're home alone, you're not really alone. You can talk to them and they don't know what you're saying. They can keep your secrets. It's a great feeling.
Off campus you can do what you want without the oversight of residence life and your life outside of class begins to be shaped more away from your school friends and you begin to understand that it is important to find people to hang out with who aren't fellow students. You realize that you took it for granted that you could walk down the hallway and find an array of your friends and just hang out. Suddenly you live minutes away instead of steps. You begin to experience the world in a new and exciting way.
Moving off campus with a year of college left is a great transition period into having to be an adult full time. You have the chance to still live the college life while experiencing the freedom of being an adult. It's both liberating and absolutely horrifying. The security of living on campus isn't there and you are more vulnerable than you expected. It's a learning experience but that's what college is all about, right?
Your commute to class is no longer less than 5 minutes. You can't blame the wifi problems on just being "Grand View." You might never have gone through so much gas in your car in a week before but even with the stress, even with the bills you begin to understand that living off campus was one of the best decisions that you have ever made.
