Back to the College Series
Perhaps everyone’s first experience with college is the dormitory. This is a seemingly mundane establishment within an institution with the intent of housing students. The most important relationship you have in college is with your roommate(s), assuming you don’t have a single room. Somehow, the colleges have devised a system to “randomly place” you with someone you couldn’t possibly deal with for more than five minutes total. Not only do you have to spend your waking time avoiding your roommate, but you also have to accomplish this within a 10’ by 12’ space maximum.
Moving into this obscenely small cell of a two-person room is quite a daunting task. Inevitably, you have overpacked. I don’t care if you’re an Albanian refugee fleeing with nothing but your hair; you’ve still packed too much. You area allotted a closet, single-hung with a shelf above the bar, a desk, a bed, and a dresser. Into this you must fit all your clothing, your books and notebooks, towels and sheets, printer, lamps, a television which ends up on your dresser regardless, a microwave, a refrigerator, and any other knick-knacks you think you require. By the end of it all you have triple-hung every hanger in your closet, utilized every square centimeter of the space under your bed, hung extra shelves from your walls, and sent half of the stuff home to your comfortable room where each and every item has its place.
Living in the dormitory is an entirely different matter. If you have chosen your dormitory based on its proximity to key buildings on campus, you have chosen incorrectly. The proper selection method requires a bit more research. You see, each dormitory has a standard type of occupant, inevitably one quite opposed to you and which you can’t stand. You must ask about these occupants before selecting your preferred place of residence. Remember to choose the one to whom you can bite your lip the easiest. Usually you will find a few people on your floor that are worthy of your tolerance. On the other hand, it is precisely these people, who you will identify as “friends,” that will keep you from that most privileged state of being known as “sleep.”
Now, theoretically, one would think that a dormitory would be a conducive location to sleep, especially being that the root of the word means “to sleep.” Yet despite all rules and regulation to the contrary, people will be loud. This is particularly true if you have tests to study for or papers to write. Do not expect to sleep during finals, EVER! If you attempt to confront those causing the inappropriate noise they will simply move to another location and increase their decibel level. And it’s not only those people within your building that cause the problem. Dorms might as well have flashing green neon signs that say “honk if you’re an immature asshole.”
The final disgrace of college dormitories has to be the bathrooms. It’s like summer camp with a longer tradition and more Lysol. You still have to wear flip-flops into the shower to avoid getting such nasty infections as Athlete’s Foot… or maybe botulism, you never can be too sure. The showers are rarely, if ever, lit so that those of us who shave in the shower can’t possibly see what we’re doing. Not that it helps that the showers are 2’ by 2’ squares and the shower head can’t aim any higher than your coccyx region and has less water pressure than the tap used for Chinese water torture. If you’re lucky enough to get into the larger, lit, handicapped shower you will be confronted upon exit by a Sociology major complaining that an able-bodied person is preventing the rightful use of the shower to those dorm occupants with disabilities. Never mind that the dorm itself is on a hill and the only access to it is 135 stairs with no wheelchair ramp. The closest thing you’ll get to a handicapped person are the mentally deficient ya-ya’s and their male counterparts/servants. But that’s a topic for another dissertation.
Moral of the Story: Always remember that it’s not the time you spend sleeping, it’s how many lives you can take for preventing you from it.