So, my roommates and I fumbled the bag in a MAJOR way last year. I’ll wear that. We waited way too long to find a house, and by the time we sat down to start looking, there was nothing left. Rules on how long you have to stay on campus vary from school to school, but for the most part you can get out of campus housing after freshman year. This is me telling you not to make the same mistake I did. Get on that shit. Even if right now it seems like it’s way too late, find something. Take it from someone who has dealt with almost a year of having to deal with the bullshit that comes with not having a house.
Living on-campus your freshman year is kind of a rite of passage. Sleeping two feet away from someone you met for the first time before you did your laundry by yourself for the first time is a special kind of experience, and that’s not to mention sharing a bathroom with thirty other people. I absolutely thrived in that environment, but the switch up to this year has not been even close to the same experience. I have absolutely no idea who lives around me except for the guys that I was already friends with from last year. My RA is not an absolute goat who hangs out with us on the weekends while we get “hydrated.” The worst thing about it all, though, is that people living in on-campus housing as sophomores are significantly less cool than a dorm full of freshman. I got hit with two quiet hours violations my freshman year (went 2-0 in hearings, though), and I can tell you for a fact we deserved wayyyyy more. I met the girl who lived below me last year not too long ago. She is not a fan of mine. She no longer attends the University of Pittsburgh, but that’s a blog for another day. We switched dorms halfway through the year, and I’ve already gotten an RA called on me twice. One of those times was at 9:30p.m on a Thursday. Since I ended up having to drop fifty on those fines, I figured I might as well make some of my money back by writing about it.
So, learn from my mistakes. Get off campus as soon as you can. It’s not worth having to worry about bringing beer into your room in backpacks, people below you who complain about noise after you just had the biggest clutch of your life in a Super Smash Bros. win. Then there’s the uncertainty that COVID brings. We haven’t been allowed to have guests for the majority of the year because of our COVID protocols, and that really blows. On a completely unrelated note, the Philadelphia Phillies will be winning the World Series this year. That’s pretty cool.
