re: What was your experience leaving home and staying in a college dorm?

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I lived at home my first year of college to save money and I have regretted it ever since.

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I mentioned doing that, and my dad told me it was a terrible idea. He said that if you tell college friends that you have to study or go to class, they will understand, but your loser hometown friends will bug you to go out and party or screw around with no appreciation for your need to take care of college work. He was right.

I also recall statistics showing that freshmen who lived on campus were much more likely to stay in college and graduate than those who commuted. When you commute, it's so easy to find an excuse (weather, no parking, car needs gas, etc.) to skip class, but when you can walk to class in 5 minutes, there's no excuse.

Was in a 4 bedroom, one of the roommates was a complete retard. Left 2 months in, thank God. Would come in at midnight and bang around, fart, talk to his friend and whisper weird shite on his phone while we were sleeping. One roommate was a friend who always went home on the weekend, but had a girlfriend so that's why, and the other roommate was pretty cool.

Dorm life sucked a bit. A bunch of retards were in there but otherwise not bad. Couldn't really sleep when I wanted because there was a complete retard from a higher floor who was obsessed with us who found our room to be a party room until 2-3am nightly. Made a complete mess of our room and had a huge computer with cows on it in his room. fricking dolt.

Then lived by these 2 fat fricks whose comforters were action figures and they were really strange and always complained about the noise but had matching pajamas so who the hell knew what was going on in that room.

Sometimes people would cook smelly shite and would stink up the hallways.

Bathrooms were fine. Get shower flip flops.

But I wouldn't trade it for the world. I was young, probably a little retarded myself and learned a lot about other retards and how they live.

The best part was walking right out of the dorm and straight to the campus bus or class. Easy. There were some geese that were fricking crazy that would chase us sometimes but it was retarded to because we found it eating its own eggs, blabbing. I think it got into some drugs.

Our RAs were super nerds but didn't really enforce rules but would want us to watch old movies on VHS sometimes which was kind of retarded.

I had a great time in my dorm. I lived in Herget, which was the wild wild west.

You quickly make friends, and you get involved in all kinds of random things on campus. It is a good time.

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I mentioned doing that, and my dad told me it was a terrible idea. He said that if you tell college friends that you have to study or go to class, they will understand, but your loser hometown friends will bug you to go out and party or screw around with no appreciation for your need to take care of college work. He was right.

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I should have asked your dad what to do because that's exactly what happened to me. On top of that, I didn't try to make new friends my first year so when my other friends moved off after a couple years I didn't have anyone to hang out with.

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Did you struggle making the adjustment or what it eas

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Honestly, it was a serious struggle. I had grown up on a farm. All of my neighbors were family members. I had the same two friend groups all through k-12, and most of them moved away out of state when I started college. I was at a university where I only knew a small handful of people, and was truly anonymous for the first time in my life.

At the same time, I wasn’t really that far from home. I was still expected to frequently visit (on weekends when the football team was on bye or away) to help on the farm, and the dorms kicked us out over the holidays. My dad’s commute to work took him on a route not far from my dorm, and he had a spare key to my car, so he would frequently drop in unannounced or use my car as a mailbox to drop stuff off. So, I was just far enough removed from home to lose most of my friends and my emotional support system, but close enough to still have to uphold all of my family responsibilities.

I was in a difficult engineering major that left me little time to socialize, I usually had to drive everywhere so I feared dui’s too much to drink heavily, I didn’t have a fake ID and underage drinking was being heavily cracked down on by campus authorities and BRPD at the time, I had no money to buy beer or eat out with, my dorm mate was insane and kept weird hours due to his lab job, and my main social hobby/activity hadn’t resulted in me making any close friends yet. I was actually recruited to rush a frat in the spring (I forgot which one), but I turned it down. I claimed it was because I didn’t have time for it, but it was really because I was too poor, and I knew my parents wouldn’t approve or help fund it.

I really struggled to sleep at night until I started shifting my caffeine intake from dinner to lunch. I also bought some sheets that were reminiscent of a set I had in childhood. After making those two adjustments, I finally started being able to sleep.

Things got much easier socially my second year of college, but the first year was extremely difficult. By the end of my second year, I had a serious girlfriend, several close friends at college, I was gigging in bands for beer money, and having so much fun I nearly flunked out.

Homesick?


Maybe moneysick, as in never having enough money and NO financial support/help from the folks back home. Wasn't spoiled by parents in the least that way.

1982. Was happy to get far away from my dysfunctional family, particularly my abusive a-hole (now thankfully, former) stepfather. Freshman year went to school over 500 miles away at Trinity in San Antonio on a scholarship. Thankfully was able to room with my best friend (also on scholarship, a full ride) so the roommate situation was good. He and I had late in the year birthdays, so we went away to college we were only 17 years old.

Us on the way to Trinity, stopping at the Texas welcome center:


The first week in we met all kinds of guy friends, and we eventually put together an all-freshman intramural football team which was a blast. Never won a game but partied hard. Met a lot of girls; in fact that 1st week or so went to a jungle juice party in one of the dorms, got wasted and hooked up with a cute girl named Hilary from Plano, Texas. What a great start to college life.

First year, had a lot of fun, kept up good grades, but with no money from home had to become independent REAL quick; tried a job or two then started delivering pizza for $$$. When I got a little cash on hand I went and impulsively dyed my hair blonde. FREEDOM!


taking a nap on the dorm floor using a pile of laundry as a pillow.

The only time I was close to homesick, but was in reality once again more money-sick, was at Thanksgiving and related in this long sad post from a few years ago:

Worst Thanksgiving Ever

Other than that, I LOVED going away to college and was NEVER homesick. It was nice to come back home during Christmas break and see/get together with all my high school friends, same at Mardi Gras and spring break, but no-- never missed my family and stuff like that.

Transferred to LSU after one year at Trinity and loved that even more; lived in north stadium, Pentagon and an apartment off of Gardere. Did come home to Metairie on weekends more, but only because (a) I got a serious girlfriend, and (b) my mom finally dumped my ex-stepfather during my sophomore year.

Lived in off campus dorms at UC Santa Barbara. 10 north, our RA was Wendy Turnbull

My roommate and i got a long pretty well. Both shared similar sensibility in being in the dorm as little as possible. It was a random guy and in a different frat so we didn't have to interact much outside of room. Still see him from time to time, good dude.

I thought i was sloppy but he was a messy dude. First day back for spring semester he dropped his bag of clothes on the floor, like a lax bag full. Looked at me and said i am probably not picking that up ever. I didn't care. He didn't we just stepped around it until we moved out.

He got drunk and cook ramen one night. passed out before taking out. I never used the microwave in the room so i didn't look in it. It was left in there for over a month if not months.

A few of the girls dumb enough to come over with one of our drunk arse let it known through the sororities that our room was a disaster and smelled terrible. That was a little embarrassing to be at reggies and random girl come up to me to tell me she heard my room smells like shite

Herget always smelled so we figured it was the building itself. Eventually we had enough and cleaned the room, found the inside of the microwave complete molded over. Neither of us used the microwave, it was probably in there for a long time. Maybe even over Christmas break

our next door neighbor was annoying as shite, daily he would blast the 2001 space oddessy theme on these massive speakers while playing xbox in his room. You could hear it from the lobby. One night he was having girls over to drink in his room. We are also drinking in our room so we pissed in a few Gatorade bottles and leaned it against his door, when they opened the door piss flooded his room. If you are reading this and you were in herget, i heard the girl scream "is this piss". Yes it was and i don't feel bad.

all and all, i enjoyed my time. Could have been worse. My friend lived on the same floor with 3 randos. One was a dude that went around doing magic tricks at rush. Another tried to kill himself in the their room.

Left home, stayed in a dorm for a year. Lots of shenanigans and good times. The end