Upon entering college, everyone told me that living in the dorms was a once in a lifetime experience that I simply could not pass up. They said it was THE PLACE to make life-long friends and accumulate ridiculous stories that I would cherish for the rest of my life and pass on to my children. In a way, they were correct on all accounts, but left out a few minor details.
One thing they forgot to mention was the fact that I would be officially signing away my right to privacy for the next nine months. When you're living in a 16.4 by 12-foot room that has virtually no insulation between the next room, or from the outdoors for that matter, there is absolutely no way you're ever going to be able to steam in anger or listen to your embarrassing guilty-pleasure music ever again. For example, I enjoy listening to Christmas music beginning in October, which is not exactly socially acceptable to the majority of the population. With a roommate who hates Christmas, there was zero chance of me listening to ""Frosty the Snowman"" or ""Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"" and stringing Christmas lights in the room before Thanksgiving.
On top of that, you will most likely overhear both entertaining and disturbing things coming from your neighbor's room. You could be so lucky as to catch up on some dorm floor gossip about who hooked up with who this weekend (another downfall to living in such contained premises), or you could be even luckier and overhear the ACTUAL hooking up going on just two feet from your lofted bed.
Which brings me to another slight setback with dorm room living: the lofted bed. First off, there is no ladder provided which is utterly terrifying when you're sober, let alone stumbling home inebriated in the pitch black trying not to awake your roommate. Last year I had to climb atop my desk chair, then on top of my desk and finally onto a one-inch ledge on my lofted bed so that I could leap over onto my mattress.
While getting down, you have a 50 percent chance of missing one of those vital steps, and if you aren't sober those odds raise to about 80 percent. You also are subject to hitting your head about 149 times on the ceiling when you wake up because you forget that you are lying only two feet away from the ceiling.
And last, but definitely not least, you will most likely wake up sweating profusely countless times throughout the year because, as you all know heat rises, and up in that loft, unless you're sleepin' in the nude you probably are going to sweat through your pajamas.
On the subject of hygiene and staving off the common cold, you can forget it. Not only are you constantly only three feet away from your roommate, but the communal bathrooms are similar to a gas station restroom, except they come complete with showers that are cleaned once a week. I quickly realized that there was no way I was NOT contracting the swine flu when I noticed that the showers had not been cleaned for a full week, the toilet paper hadn't been replaced all weekend and the girl next to me in the shower was urinating.
However, my friends and family did get one thing right in their advice about dormitory living. I did actually make a substantial amount of friends while taking Flaming Dr. Pepper shots, slappin' the bag of Franzia before floor dinners, collecting in someone's room Monday nights for ""Gossip Girl"" and enjoying a pleasant hangover breakfast at Pop's before dragging our tired asses to College Library for eight hours.
