When you hear stories about college you typically hear about all the stress of classes, not fitting in, partying every weekend, and going completely broke. What people don’t tell you is the horror of community bathrooms. Yes, community bathrooms. This was my biggest obstacle when I entered college and I am sure that I am not the only one.
To a lot of people community bathrooms are the least of their worries, but to a germaphobe like me, this was a major issue. In college, community bathrooms have a known rule that you wear shower shoes, or rubber flip-flops, to protect your feet and to bring a shower caddy so your products will not have to be placed on the ground. Sounds super clean right? Wrong.
The reality of these bathrooms is that they are disgusting. Even if you have the mindset that if you go to the same shower every day, that eventually it will feel like your own; it will never be just yours.
I struggled with the idea of having to take a shower in a stall that was filled with tumbleweeds of hair and old pieces of a soap bar from the girl down the hall. It wasn't always about the shower conditions though, it was also about the people. I had no idea who the other girls were or what germs or sicknesses they had, and that freaked me out even more.
My hall's bathroom was unusually decorated by my RA who hung signs to remind the residents that the showers were not a second toilet. Yes, you read that right, ladies on my hall used the showers as their own personal toilet.
The sight of the signs made me cringe. It made me question the walls, floor, door handles, and especially the girls who I had to share the bathroom with. The more I walked into the bathroom the more I cleaned the shower myself before each use. My roommates and friends teased me and said I overreacted to a simple shower, but to me, it was just unacceptable.
I quickly devised a plan to help me enjoy my showers without me buying tons of bleach each week to clean the showers. I started to learn all of the custodian's schedules and showered right after they finished cleaning. As the semester continued I finally found comfort in community bathrooms and stopped spending so much money on bleach.
In some ways this is a story just about showers and in other ways it’s a way of saying even our greatest obstacles come with a solution, you just have to decide if you are willing to let fear win or learn to overcome it.
