living in a dorm

Post Reply New Topic

How do you cope w/ so many people in a dorm?

Well, I don't know what your dorms are like, but I hardly ever see anyone who isn't in my apartment, and everyone gets their own room here so I don't have to worry about that.

For me at least where I go to school, dorm are segregated by class rank

I Live in a dorm that has upperclass, non-standard, and foriegn exchange students

It's a smaller dorm too, only 200 residents.

It's quiet at night and I have yet to live through someone pulling the fire alarm at 2am.

My dorms so far have sucked (Ive had 2 out of the 5 possible at school) both have had people up at 3 AM with paper thin walls . And to answer question alot of naps.

LOL, my dorm room has cinderblock walls, not a very homelike atmosphere, but it keeps the sound out.

The experiences I've had living in different dorms last year versus this year have been complete opposites. Last year, the rooms were extremely cramped, poorly ventilated, old...just sh***y in general. The one advantage was that it had a very friendly, open door atmosphere, and it was easy to meet other people, and there were always people in our room- we were usually the ones who were making noise at 3AM. This year, my room is extremely nice, spacious, etc., but it's really quiet. I still don't even know who some of my neighbors are.

Seeing as this is my fourth (and worst) year in the dorms I can give you all kinds of stories. My mistake was being picky. I have been kicking myself over giving away my single room this year for a roommate because I thought I needed to be around people again. She turned out to be a neurotypical inconsiderate b*tch so I had to move to a run down old building but with my own room.

In a way, I am highly convinced that the freshmen and sophomores who live in the dorms are much more friendlier than the juniors and seniors. I know my most memorable times in the dorms was during my freshman and sophomore years where I got to know people and they got to know me. And yes, I can be a b*tch myself but I guess it's because by your fourth year you get pretty tired of the poor restrictions and rundown-ness of dorm life. I'm making plans to get a single bedroom apartment next year.

Moral of the story: Better to live alone than to take any risks with new roommates...trust me.

My dorm (in Vienna, Austria) consists of my single room (with it's own bathroom), but a communal kitchen. I love having my own room because I'm able to arrange everything the way I would like. Clean it as often as I'd like and be alone as often as I'd like. The problem with the communal kitchen is that I occassionally get anxious when there are many people in the room. I tend not to go in if there are many people cooking because I just get flustered by other people moving around me. I've adjusted enough so that I don't starve, but I'm not forced to be around people all the time. I'm sure it's left other people thinking that I'm unfriendly and anti-social. But what can you do...

Even an apartment building has become too crowded for me. So now I must seek out a house

Having a single dorm room, or room within an apartment, is great. A patch of living area you can control. I've loved it like that. My rap sheet:

Freshman Year: In a double (2 beds, so me + 1 roommate) in a 530-resident, 8-story high rise dorm.
Sophomore: Single room in same dorm.
Junior: Single room in a 120-resident, 3-story dorm.
Senior: Single room in an apartment for 4.

That said, dorm life in college has been unbelievable. I have sooooooooooooooo many crazy stories from life in the dorms. Many people find it annoying, and while much of it IS annoying, some of it, if taken with a sense of humor, can be quite entertaining.

I love apartments. They're much easier to maintain than a house. I want to spend my weekends pursuing my interests, not mowing lawns or having to worry about a broken furnace!

That said, getting back to Margie's original question, here's how I coped in the dorm:
1) Try to get a single room
2) If (1) is not possible, try to set ground rules in place ahead of time with your roommate. Don't try to "lay down the law" on him/her, actually talk out what you want to do and when, and give your roommate the chance to do the same to you. Then try to develop solutions to problems as they arise along that.
3) Try to find out when your roommate will NOT be in the room and try to plan things that require concentration around then. Encourage your roommate to do the same.

Hope this helps!

Mine has cinderblock walls as well. However, I can still hear noisy people out in the hallway even during "quiet hours".

Lucky you! My dorm is only quiet during finals (since they have to be), and even when I was studying for finals at like 2 or 3am, I still heard some noise in the hallway. The stupid fire alarm also goes off a lot. I don't know if someone pulls it, or if these people just do stupid things that set it off. It went off 3 or 4 times one day! It's also gone off at like 4am which was really horrible, and I remember one time it went off cuz some idiot put jiffy popcorn (the kind you cook on the stove)in the microwave. Ugh!

Yea, that'll do it. I don't think anyone's been that stupid, but people do leave popcorn in the microwave too long and it burns which stinks up the whole floor.

The private school I will be going too is cool cause most of the people get their own dorms with bathrooms

Yeah they do that too.

I go to a community college, and live with ma & pa dukes. Saves a ton of money.