The ups and downs of living at college...

In high school I thought it was the greatest thing to live in a dorm. I was jealous of my friends that would get that chance. I’ve been to most of my friend’s dorms and living at a college definitely has its pros and cons. The dorms themselves aren’t that big and sharing them with either two or three people makes it even worse. Having my own room all of my life, I couldn’t even imagine having to share such a small living space. School is hard enough already and having someone else to cope with is ever harder. Roommates don’t tend to have identical schedules so while one has to study the other one might want to have friends over. Dealing with roommate’s habits and the habits of their friends can be the worst part of living in a dorm. On the other hand, roommates can become a person’s best friend and they could have the best four years together.

Besides living with the people in your room you have to deal with the other people sharing the floor. Loud music and parties can be very distracting when someone has to study or do homework. The smells of the food that each person cooks in their room could be nauseating. Every person on that floor has to share a bathroom. Granted there is usually more than one stall in that bathroom, they could become pretty disgusting. The showers also have to be shared and trying to clean oneself in something that has everyone else’s filth in it can be disgusting also. There are some positive sides to this though. Having so many people on a floor, a person is bound to find a friend to hang with or a party to go to on a weekend. The other aspect of living away from home is the food at a college. It is almost all of the time much different than home cooking. Only having a few choices of food that you might not like is hard with all the other changed that college brings. Some people like being able to choose what they eat instead of having someone telling them to eat healthy foods or to eat more or to eat less.

Freedom is the ultimate positive point in living at college. Parents aren’t there telling you what to do every second. There aren’t any curfews and school work can get done whenever you feel up to doing it. Siblings aren’t there to annoy you and chores like cleaning are optional. Living away from home has its positives and negatives so each individual has to evaluate which situation has more ups than downs.