We have all seen the movie portrayals of the dorm life experience that paint it as an outrageous ongoing party. Your Resident Assistants, who “police the building,” will try to stop your shenanigans, and you will make this enormous friend group and know everyone in your hall. Most of the time, this is not the case.
I expected that I would be close to half my hall and, to be honest, I thought that I would walk through the halls every night with music blasting and that there would be a rager on almost every floor every weekend. Not to say there wasn’t a party here and there on the weekends, but it wasn’t as often as I expected.
In reality, the dorms are a place where people have come to grind through their day-to-day work and move forward with the term. We have midterms, hell week, finals, large amounts of course work and hardly anyone has the energy to rage every night.
Additionally, social media makes it seem like you are supposed to have the most aesthetically pleasing space where you and your roommate reside. You are expected to have beautiful wall decor and a trendy bedspread to create a place where you will have people all the time – and maybe you will. But these expectations aren’t necessarily ideal.
You are provided with a small living space that isn’t usually large enough for all these accommodations you might be bringing with you.
You don’t need to have the trendiest room, because at the end of the day, this is a place to study and decompress after a long day of classes.
That is not to say you can’t make your room yours and feel free to express yourself, but remember that you only have a select amount of space. I bought way too much stuff my first year. The following year, I ended up reducing what I brought with me because I knew all these things were not realistically going to work for me in my space, and I planned to collect decor along the way.
You may also have questions about the RAs in your hall such as, “Are the rules strict? Do they limit how much freedom I have in the dorms?”
There are rules to keep you safe and policies that they have to follow to make sure you aren’t making stupid decisions, but that mainly has to do with making sure everyone in the building is safe, can get into their rooms and feels a sense of community.
They want you to have just as much fun as they did their first year; they just have a job to do. And, they are students just like you.
The expectation of friendship in your dorms, especially your roommate, can be high. I have a good-sized friend group, but I did not know everyone by name on my floor, and that’s OK. Everyone operates differently.
On a large campus like UO, it’s not like high school, and there aren’t a lot of cliques. Everyone is doing their own thing, meeting friends and focusing on school. Everyone is maturing and learning new things about themselves, so the pressure of social drama is somewhat lifted.
College is not scary. It may be intimidating when you first arrive, especially since you are in a new environment you’ve never been in before and have newfound freedom you don’t know what to do with. The dorms are a place to meet new people, make connections and, most importantly, a place for you to live and feel safe.
If you have concerns, contact your RAs. Their job is to make sure you are enjoying dorm life and your time in the halls.
