It’s that time of year when freshmen—and sophomores who for some reason still live in dorms—have to decide whether or not they’ll be living on campus next year.
Take it from someone who has lived both on and off campus, you should NOT suffer through dorm life any longer than is absolutely necessary. Here are five reasons to ditch your RA’s and their quiet hours and get a place of your own.
1. You will eat like a king.
Are you tired of Ramen? Are you tired of Easy Mac? Are you tired of Hot Pockets? Of course not, all that “food” is delicious. But it probably makes you feel fat. And it definitely makes you actually fat.
Don’t feel bad. Everybody picks up a freshman 15 that first year they get thrown out into the world and are told to fend for him or herself. A gas station burrito sounds great at the time—and it’s only $2.99, how can you turn that down?—but after a few months, a diet consisting only of what you can prepare using a microwave catches up to you. If you ever find yourself scrolling through Facebook photos of how fit you were during track season your senior year of high school and wondering where the baby-sized bulge in your midsection came from, maybe it’s time to consider moving out of the dorms.
Do you know what I just had for breakfast? Chocolate chip banana bread I made in my own oven.
Do you know what I had for dinner last night? An omelet that I made on my own stove with beer I kept in my own fridge. Is drinking beer every night terrible for you? Yes. But at least I’m not on your Ramen diet. If you live off campus, you can eat food fit for humans on a regular basis. Which brings me to my next point…
2. You won’t be bound by a meal plan.
Washakie is great, said that visiting friend you gave a one-day pass to. But the school can only afford so much variety. Living off campus and going grocery shopping like some kind of sophisticated adult offers you all the variety in the world. With the money you would have spent on a meal plan at Washakie, you can vary your diet. You can go buy literally anything you want to eat, as long as you don’t want crab cakes and calamari because those are for the real adults with real money. Capitalism!
3. You can throw parties.
I know UW students never drink alcohol in the dorms, but maybe you sometimes host a soda party where you and your friends can stumble around and grope each other thanks to the intoxicating effects of caffeine. If you’ve tried this recipe for success/failure, you will know already the shortcomings on dorm-based partying. For one, there’s no room for a root beer pong table. There’s not even room for all of your totally-not-drunk friends. At best, you can cram ten people into your tiny space on the fourth floor of Orr.
Do you know how many people can fit in my apartment? Because I don’t. When my roommate and I have parties, we just keep inviting people because there’s so much room. We have yet to run out of room. It’s fantastic!
And do you know how loud we can be? A lot louder than you dorm-dwellers. If you speak in anything but the most delicate inside voice, you run the risk of that feisty little RA storming into your room with campus cops in tow. And then you and your ten best caffeinated friends all get slammed with underage caffeine possession charges.
Do you know what happens when a cop comes to my door? I don’t answer it and he goes away. If he heard someone getting hurt or smelt marijuana—that dangerous drug whose excessive use kills 88,000 Americans a year—he’d have probable cause and be able to burst right in. But none of that tomfoolery happens in my apartment so I’ve nothing to fear. I can ignore the knock, turn down my music a few notches and the police can’t enter the place where I live.
Civil liberties!
4. You can have privacy. In a similar strain as the last, your apartment is your business. I have no snooping RA’s watching what I bring into my own residence with their evil hawk eyes.
I even have a room all to myself. When you share a dorm, you can’t sleep naked. When you share a dorm, you have to kick out your roommate that one night of the year you manage to bring a girl home (my freshman year was not successful). When you share a dorm, you can’t do that thing you can only do when your roomie is in class unless your roomie is in class. But with your own room in your own apartment, you can be as freaky as you want.
5. You have more options in general.
Do you want a cat? Find a place that allows pets. Do you want a balcony? Find a place with a view. Do you want five roommates? One roommate? No roommates? Go for it. The world is your oyster for a few hundred dollars a month, utilities included. So live off campus. Get out there, be an adult, lose the subpar diet and constant surveillance and embrace your newfound freedom.
