During my first two years at college, I lived on campus in dorms. Freshman year I lived with a random roommate (horrible experience) and sophomore year I lived in a suite with 5 other girls (incredible experience). During my junior year I moved off campus into an apartment with one other girl.

My apartment is small. Just enough room inside to squeeze in borrowed and mismatched furniture that squeaks when you sit on it. My apartment is old. The stove looks like it is straight out of a kitchen from a show on TV Land, and the front door gets stuck when you try to open it. Sometimes there is no water pressure, and sometimes smoke spills from the burners on top of the stove. My closet door is loose and the tiles on my bedroom floor come off sometimes. And in the winter, squirrels get stuck in the ceiling and the walls and I can hear them scratch all night. There is no air conditioning, and there is a hole on my ceiling that I repaired with black electrical tape. And while all that may sound like I live in a trashy apartment, I have never loved living anywhere more. To me, this run down place is paradise.

This dingy apartment has become the thing I cherish most in my college career. Living here taught me how to be the best, most independent version of myself. It is now my responsibility to balance time between doing school work and cleaning and cooking for myself. And while there were growing pains at first, and I may have ruined Hot Pockets for myself forever, I think I finally figured it out. Being able to take care of myself, at least in this minor way, gave me confidence. Every Sunday when I am cleaning the bathroom while my laundry is in and making myself lunch all at the same time, I am proud of myself.

Living off campus is also when I started to feel at home in Geneseo. I felt like I had a place that I could call my home, instead of just having a bed inside of a shared dorm room. My friends come over and we play board games in the kitchen, or do homework at the dining room table, or we watch a movie and drink cheap wine on the random chairs and couches. And then I have my own room for when I have visitors. When my fiance visits, he can watch TV with me in my actual living room instead of watching Netflix from a computer that sits on my lap in my dorm bed while my roommate tries to pretend we aren't actually there.

I know that this form of "living on my own" is considered meaningless to some people. My parents still pay my rent as part of them paying for me to go to school and I don't have other bills to worry about. And everything I need is a 10 minute walk away. But for me, moving off campus was the best thing I ever did. And keeping myself happy and healthy (and alive) when all of the responsibility was put on me, is a big accomplishment.

So I would recommend moving off campus to anyone that asked me my opinion. Take the opportunity to grow, to mature, and to figure out, even in minute ways, how to take care of yourself. Because when nobody is around to do it for you anymore, you will surprise yourself with just how much you are capable of. And living in this apartment did exactly that for me. I will never forget the memories I made within these paint chipped walls.