Column:
Res. Hall life can only last so long
Published Feb. 13, 2007
LONDON — Flat life, I've noticed is quite like residence hall life. Consequently, I offer a call to action: Get out.
Don't get me wrong. Both flat and residence hall life have major benefits. You've got a built-in community of people all around you. Sounds ideal on paper, but you should remember the words of a dead Frenchman, "Hell is other people."
The biggest problem people face in such closed living situations tend to be roommates. In a residence hall room, roommates have to face each other hour after hour, day after day. Your roommate will be there when you wake up, when you get home and when you go to sleep, more often than not. That's a lot of one person.
This occasionally can be great, but the number of bad stories I've heard leads me to believe this can also be a nightmare.
The roommate might blow his nose every two seconds or sleep in constantly or get it on randomly when you're trying to sleep. Maybe the roommate's drunk friend urinates on your shorts. Maybe it's your drunk roommate doing the urinating. And sometimes, just sometimes, the roommate can go straight-up psycho. None of this is that cool. A little suggestion: Don't room with close friends.
Aside from those immediate risks, residence halls possess other pitfalls. When everyone lives literally 10 feet away, a battle of who can blast his or her music louder becomes annoying when your across-the-hall neighbor is blaring Fall Out Boy.
Drama also happens in this cinder box of a social scene. Time becomes compressed in the crazy 24/7 residence hall setting, and people can quickly fall in and out of love. Relationships in such close quarters can certainly work out well, but the fallout isn't always pretty when you face the wreckage in front of you seven days a week.
One true unifying factor in both residence hall and flat life, I've realized is tearing other people apart. When I lived in the residence hall at MU, people loved to sit around and mock the odder among the residents. I'm complicit in this myself, I freely admit. In the initial weeks of my freshmen year, people practically made a sport out of laughing at others. For better or worse, people bonded faster when dropping lotion-filled condoms on a suitemate's floor or sharing their bemusement at some surreally strange stories.
This all occurred again as people bonded in London for my study abroad program this semester. Lovely nicknames such as "Shithead" and "Ice" were applied early on; these names were not particularly unwarranted, though. A perpetually drunk, racist Virginian with diamond-studded earrings pissing out of his flat's window isn't bound to ingratiate himself too easily to any of his flatmates, let alone a sane human being. Other habits, such as not brushing your teeth for a whole weekend, will also be zeroed out in these close-quarter environments. Hygiene, people, is a beautiful thing.
In the end, I love the residence halls despite all this. They provide a great chance to meet people and have memorable times, but it can only last so long. A person can only stand so many overpriced spicy chicken and Tiger Rib sandwiches.
Remember this when renewal time for your residence hall contracts comes for next year, Columbians, and rest with the peace of potential escape. The alternative will leave you trapped in a chaotic beehive of college students where there is truly no exit.
