Freshman tells of dirty living, letting loose

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Living away from the parental-unit is the ultimate perk of college life and is symbolized by nothing other than the freshman dorm. It’s a magical place where things such as hygiene and sleep do not exist and anything you want can be microwaved at any time of the night. Things like school and homework don’t restrain your social life from going until 4 a.m. And yes, having your own minifridge is everything you thought it would be.

At least until those muffins Mom sent me last month began to rot. Then we had some issues.

In all honestly, living in the dorms, particularly in Brody Complex, is something I view more as an endurance test than a vacation from home. I miss my green room covered in framed photos of friends, having a full closet, and the ability to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without climbing down a ladder, digging for my keys and putting on flip-flops. I have come to accept that the dorms are going to be a loud, not aesthetically pleasing experience. But it’s not all bad.

For starters, I like my roommate. Knowing that going in with a close friend eventually would lead to a slow and steady build up of complaints and criticisms until tensions exploded, I went in blind and got lucky. My roomie and I are comfortable enough to be honest with each other, friendly enough to chat once in a while and busy enough that we each have some privacy. We respect each other’s wishes, and are open-minded enough to accept each other’s quirks. Some people aren’t so fortunate.

One girl I know got a messy slob for a roomie. Her clothes always are in a pile by the closet, she wakes up to an alarm that goes off at 6:15 a.m., she came home the first night wasted and she’s always stealing the Ethernet cord and eating all the food. The only positive thing about her roomie is that she has some job at a newspaper and is gone all the time.

But what I’m finding just as important as my roommate are the other people in the hall. It’s all girls, which I personally think leaves us less sociable than we otherwise would have been. (Proof: the first time we had an “open-door night” with a boy’s hall, there were girls I’d never seen before with whom I’d apparently lived for the last three weeks). But it seems like the majority of the people I’ve met on campus who I actually can call friends (or, rather, acquaintances with friend potential), are the girls in my hall. We watch movies together, we go to dinner together, we randomly stand around the bathroom at 2 a.m. and complain about life together. It’s not a bad deal. And my mentor is one of those people who, for whatever reason, is really excited to be living in Brody with a bunch of freshmen.

I actually have met sophomores, juniors and even a senior who are living in Brody Complex this semester. But during the summer, when MSU alumni would be putting me through the normal query (How many credits are you taking? When do you move in? Are you excited?) they would ask where I was living.

“Brody,” I’d say.

“Brody!” They’d respond. “The freshman dorms!”

I could never tell whether the phase “freshman dorms” was meant to be a positive one or a negative one.

I think it’s meant to be positive for the most part. You walk down the hall and people have their doors open. Social events constantly are being planned for us to meet each other. We get exercise going the extra distance to all of our classes. Weekends are crazy. And we never have to clean our bathrooms.

Oh, the community bathrooms. Another infamous aspect of dorm life. Where my toothpaste meets the remains of someone’s soup meets a clump of hair in a sink. Where every shower can be open, but only two are actually usable. And were kindergartners hired to attach the locks on the stall doors? It’s a given the flip-flops are worn at all times. At 7 a.m. I walk inside and every horizontal surface is wet. I’ve never witnessed the maintenance staff cleaning the bathrooms, but I imagine they have some type of hose which they turn on and simply spray in whatever direction they choose. And being a night-showerer, any cleaning the showers might have undergone that morning is nonexistent at midnight.

On the bright side, the food in Brody is pretty good for being created in a construction zone. Aside from the occasional pounding, beeping and sawing, the ongoing construction hasn’t bothered me. Then again, I come from a home that constantly is undergoing remodeling. It’s a bit annoying not having the cafeteria within the building.

There is only one entrance, which unfortunately faces away from my building. On the upside, when winter comes and I have to choose between a foot of snow and freezing winds or ignoring my stomach for the night, the freshman 15 is not going to be a problem.

Overall, the dorms have their charms and challenges. I’ll be back living on campus next year, though hopefully I’ll find a bathroom in which the stall doors actually lock.

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