We’ve all been forced to live in close quarters at some point in our lives. Whether it was with your annoying little sister until you outgrew the bunk bed, a quadruple dormitory room your Freshman year or that one time in the same sleeping bag the night the heat went out, we’ve all had a taste of it. Following the end of the academic year, many of us are ready to escape into the blissful freedom of an apartment — which feels oh so much sweeter after being locked in the same 144-square-foot room with someone else for nine months. Here are some pretty great things about leaving the dorms:
1. You don’t have to see that terrible multicolored ResComp login screen every 240 minutes. It would have been an unmitigated disaster throughout the year if you didn’t have that Chrome extension that saved your login credentials. But it was still annoying enough as is — cutting your streaming movies and large downloads short at least once a day to your eternal agony. Now you’ll only have to be privy to it when you visit a friend who lives in the dorms … like that’s ever going to happen.
2. You don’t have to lug your laundry around for miles only to discover that all of the washing machines are taken. Upon doing so, you may have realized that you’ve forgotten your ID card on the eighth floor of your building, and you face the terrible choice of carrying your laundry back or trusting all those strangers not to touch your soiled clothes. While the latter may seem like a daunting proposition, you’re lazy, so you scamper all the way back to the elevator when your ID falls out of your back pocket. And you have to put up with this once every week. Now that you’re out of the dorms, this will no longer plague your laundry routine.
3. You can play your music as loud as you please! Well, not maybe not to the point where it may incur a noise complaint, but you can at least make use of those speakers you bought at the beginning of last year before realizing that your roommate has an aversion to your (subjectively) great taste in music. And no more wearing those uncomfortable Apple earphones that slowly stretch out your ears — it’s going to be a party in your new room.
4. You’re no longer bound by meal points! Eating at your favorite restaurants and fast-food places no longer comes with a side serving of guilt that you should be partaking in the fattening or maybe unappealing experience of the dining halls. What’s even better — you don’t have to look disgustedly at your receipt after paying five meal points for a half gallon of milk when Walgreen’s has twice the amount for half the price.
5. You’ve gone back to calling it a “dorm.” Throughout the year, there may have been a period where you inadvertently began calling it “home” — good thing you got out of that jam.
6. You might just be able to watch some TV that isn’t being played at 240p resolution on half of your computer screen while you attempt to do homework on the other half. You may not get the full array of HD channels that you’re used to watching on your couch at home-home, but you can at least appreciate Stephen Curry going off for fifty points on at least a 20-inch display.
7. You’re spending more time on campus. If you lived in the dorms, you may have followed a strict beeline from your dorm to class and back again. Chances are that you’ll be living farther away from campus if you’re in an apartment — so look forward to extra exercise and sexy calves in the making. Since you can’t walk all the way back if you have an hour between classes, you may actually set foot inside a library too!
8. You’ll actually have friends come over to your place. No one wanted to come over to your triple — and understandably so, namely because of the lack of space and oxygen in the room. Now you can suggest your place as somewhere to meet up for a group project or even host a movie night every couple of weeks.
9. You’re not completely screwed if you left your wallet or your purse in your room and stepped out for a breath of fresh air after 6PM. No longer do you have to face the hassle of convincing the Security Monitor that you’re NOT a terrorist but just a forgetful student who would like to return to their place of shelter.
10. You don’t go to sleep fearing that you might be woken up at the crack of dawn to the lovely tune of the fire alarm. Even if that poor kid running on the last vestiges of caffeine in his system had pulled on it thinking it was the door to his room. But that didn’t change the fact that you stand outside in the morning cold f0r hours — without the reassuring warmth of your laptop.
Even though it’s only the beginning of summer, all you fresh dorm-leavers know it’s going to be an exciting year. Devoid of the long, prison-like halls with the fading flecks of paint and smelly communal bathrooms, your new apartment is going to be awesome.
Image source: Kevin Trotman under Creative Commons.
