Living in a dorm your freshman year, is what makes your freshman year your freshman year.

Trust me, I had it as bad as anybody else. Maybe even worse, as the UPD knew my dorm and hall when they received most phone calls. Yes. As bad as it can get possibly.

But even after a crazed year of drunk girls, fights, parties, and noise complaints, I still am sitting here telling you incoming freshman, current freshman, and dorm alumni, it's what you need. You need to scrounge under every surface in your room for quarters to do laundry. You need to see the extent of how gross girls can be in a community bathroom, and question your gender entirely. And even better, compare it to stories of the guys' dorm for who has it worse. You gotta learn to live entirely off of food that can't go bad and your big meal of the night being out of a microwave, but still eating the Ramen noodles for the 19th time that week.

But the best thing about living in a dorm is how much it makes you appreciate your next upgraded living that much more.

Whether it's an apartment, better dorm, or house, it's that much better.

Say goodbye to paying for laundry and scrounging for quarters.

See ya to sharing bathrooms with anybody other than your trusted BFs (hopefully).

Showers without shoes, and remembering that is a normal every day occurrence for most people again.

Eating out of a normal-sized fridge, oven, stove, and still, your microwave.

Being able to grocery shop with no worries of food going bad, or not being able to fit it in the mini fridge.

Making your own dinners, and having no restrictions.

Eating dinners on a surface that you don't also do school work, makeup, and everything else on.

Having your own space. All the time, any time you want. With your own door.

Having 10 times the space for all your stuff.

Having more then one room for everything you do: laundry, eating, homework, relaxing, hanging out with people. The year spent doing everything in a single room has passed.

Being with your best friends 24/7, but now when you have those stupid arguments, you have places to go to instead of dramatically slamming your dorm door or the awkward silence from both halves of the room.