Dorms vs Off-Campus Housing

I am a junior and have lived on-campus for the last two years. I was in dorm rooms, not the apartments and I am finally moving into my first big kid house. It is a huge change for me and I’m already noticing quite a few things that were more convenient living in the dorms:

1. The fact that if something in the house breaks, I can’t just call maintenance and expect them to magically appear within five minutes. I have to actually locate someone who fixes those types of things and wait for them to schedule time to come to the house. And then I have to sit around and wait for them to actually come!

2. How if one of our roommates doesn’t work out, I don’t get to just let Housing take care of it. If a roommate moves out for whatever reason, I now actually will have to PAY their share until we find someone else.

3. Having a real kitchen. Which originally was exciting and I thought about all the cute kitchen-y stuff to buy, until I realized that this also requires that I cook for myself. Which I can’t do. So I guess I’ll wear my new leopard print oven mitts while I use the toaster, or something.

4. Bills. I will now have to remember to actually turn off my laptop, instead of leaving it on “sleep” mode, and plugged in, all day and night. Instead of paying for everything upfront, we will now have to divide these bills among the roommates and make sure they actually get paid.

5. Public Safety will not be there to ensure that the area around my house is perfectly safe. Which is a bit alarming, considering I am mildly paranoid. It’s very nice that on campus, they are constantly patrolling and making sure there aren’t any weirdos creeping around the dorms. And also, they make sure none of my neighbors are too obnoxious.

I haven’t even actually moved in yet, but I love my roommates so hopefully we can at the very least avoid Issue #2. I’m sure this will also make it easier to transition from college to Big Kid Life after graduating, as well. But it definitely makes the dorms seem much more appealing now than they did when I actually lived in them!

-Holly