"There's no place like home,"an old adage informs us.Most newcomers to the University will also quickly discover that there's no place like dormitories, but for very different reasons.
At home, most people operate under a common understanding of respect and a set of ground rules for living. But some people come to college lacking this understanding, which makes adjusting to dormitory life less than easy. Oftentimes, dorm life difficulties spawn from ignoring some simple, basic questions.
Are we going to share food? When should it be quiet? Can we borrow each other's things? If unaddressed, these types of questions, though they seem unimportant, tend to create complications between roommates. Even worse, if you don't become adept at resolving these issues, they can persist throughout college and cause considerable stress. And trust me when I say that tests and homework are stressful enough. When I first arrived here, I thought those questions were unimportant and, if asked, would make me a terribly annoying roommate.
My first year, I had a television in my room. When I returned from class, I always found my roommate watching TV and insistently begged him to lower the volume so that I could study. Since I like to study in silence and loathe libraries, the study environment was awfully uncomfortable.
I'm a third year now, and problems like this still plague me. I returned to one my room one recent evening to discover that all of my non-perishable food (and shampoo) perished at the hands of my roommates. On top of that, my return was greeted with the perfect accent -- my roommate sleeping gracefully on my bed after a night of drunken escapades.
In retrospect, both situations stemmed from insufficient roommate communication. After moving in, it's each roommate should write down a list of things that bother them and what they want to share. While RAs suggest this, few people actually do it.
Many students make the mistake of becoming too friendly with each other before discussing serious business, a strategy that can lead to serious problems down the road. With the last scenario I mentioned in which I returned to my apartment, the problems arose from a failure to set ground rules. Yet for those in dormitories, setting these rules is easier with the help of RAs.
If a roommate violates the agreed upon rules of living, then there's always an RA to consult. While RAs might be better known for issuing VSOCs (i.e. drinking warnings), they are tremendously useful at resolving these kinds of issues.
Inevitably though, some students agonize over their roommates and request roommate changes. Such despair is understandable, but in the long run it benefits them if they try and work out the conflict. Part of the college experience is coping with difficult personalities. It's best to think of it as a training ground for the real world. College definitely isn't the only time when we'll encounter dysfunctional relationships.
Most students won't suffer such extreme roommate dilemmas. More common is the tendency to have trouble adjusting to the social component of dorm life. For some, it's tremendously difficult to transition into a more active social life.
Dorm life, especially during first year, promotes a mob mentality. that most newcomers will notice in the first week of school. As things settle, suitemates and hallmates tend to engage in social festivities together which trigger the devastating lemming mode.
The most important thing I extracted from my experience was that those who did tend to party more often had less time to work which translated into cramming. And wherever there's cramming, stress lurks nearby.
Therein lays the irony of the social life that dormitories cultivate. While hanging out with your dormmates brings you closer together, it has academic consequences. The best prescription for this is to adopt prudent sensibilities and to use foresight before venturing beyond uncharted social frontiers.
You've probably heard of tough love at home, but don't be surprised if you hear it around here. Ground rules might be tough to get used to, but it'll make living enjoyable and provide useful long term skill sets. Such an experience is all part of the ephemeral joy of dorm life.
Charles Lee's column usually appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at clee@cavalierdaily.com.
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