Living on campus is both a blessing and a curse. When you first move into your dorms freshman year, you're excited about the new experience but the excitement wears down pretty fast when you start noticing the little things that annoy you. By your second semester sophomore year, you literally can't wait to move off-campus. The thought of having an apartment where you can literally do whatever you want sounds more and more appealing every second. But as your time with housing comes close to its end, you realize there are a lot of things that won't be the same anymore. There are a lot of things we almost love to hate about living in dorms.
When you live on campus, everything you need is right there...for the most part. Sure, it's super inconvenient to have to get a ride, or God forbid take a bus, to go to a store, but in reality, you don't need to go that often. You don't need to go food shopping, you buy all your clothes online, and whatever supplies you run out of, you usually wait for your parents to buy those.
The dining hall makes meals a lot easier, except for the fact that 90% of the food is completely inedible. Once you're off campus, you have to go food shopping and make your own meals. Sure, this means you can have whatever you want, not just what the dining hall is serving that night. But it also means you have to put all the work in to make the food. Most of the time will just be spent wondering if it's worth it or if you should just eat whatever is accessible in the fridge.
One of the worst parts of not living on campus is that you won't be around everyone 24/7 anymore. You'll be living with your close friends, but not those random friends you don't talk to often but see in the dining hall on the weekends. Now you have to actually make plans to hang out with people, you don't all conveniently live within a three-minute walk of each other. When you live on campus, every day is a social scene, people are always coming in and out of your room. If you live off-campus it's really just you and your apartment mates.
One of the things you definitely won't miss is the paper thin walls. I can hear EVERYTHING going on in the room next to me, and it's not something I find enjoyable. Maybe now you'll be able to study in your room without hearing every conversation being held out in the hallway and the overwhelmingly loud music the kids across the hall are playing. Nothing is more annoying than hearing someone else's alarm clock going off for their 8:30 when you don't have to be awake for another two hours.
You may never have to fear getting written up by your RA ever again, but living in a dorm is one of the things you'll always remember. There is nothing quite like sharing a shoebox sized room with another person and having all your closest friends a few doors down. Love it or hate it, there will always be a tiny part of you that will miss all the memories.
