It always made me really mad when my mother had more rules for me than my brother. Part of it was because I'm older, but some of it was because of gender.
Age is indeed a big part. My sister is younger than me and had a lot more leeway. My immediate cousins, who live in NJ, have the same experience; the oldest sibling, who's a female close to my age, was also fairly strictly "regulated", but her younger sisters get away with a lot more.
As many of you know, I'm nuts. :-) I lived in the same dorm all six years I went to college, four in the same room (I like to joke that they retired my room number after I left). For the most part, I'm glad I did.
There were several reasons for this:
I didn't have to do any cooking.
The only cleaning I had to do was one small room.
It was easier to have a social life. (Believe it or not, I'm very shy in person.)
PARTIES! :-D
Yes, I had a couple of things stolen and a couple of things damaged, but I couldn't imagine living any other way.
Steve
P.S. I take it this got split from another thread. I wish when that happened that a pointer to the original thread would be placed at the start of the new thread.
P.S. I take it this got split from another thread. I wish when that happened that a pointer to the original thread would be placed at the start of the new thread.
The problem is that when you split, you can't split and append to an existing thread -- you must create a new one, so I can't prepend the thread with a link. This is where I split it off from.
i'm glad i chose to live in a dorm; it's been a very good experience for me and i made friends i definitely would not have made otherwise. Granted, this year as a sophomore i lived on a freshman hall and we had more alcohol-related ambulance calls and hospital transports than any hall in the history of our school (as many as 3 in a given weekend), so not everyone takes the freedom so well. It's a question of maturity and trust. Personally, living in that dorm made me give up drinking (not that i drank much to begin with) because of the bad shape i saw some of my hallmates in (having to do 5 loads of laundry when a (now ex) girlfriend puked in my bed didn't help none either).
I think it's also a good experience for some people for other reasons (especially the spoiled kids who've never had to share a room before - it's a growing experience for them not to have a walk-in closet :-)). Hey - you're gonna have to send your kid away into the real world by the time they graduate; IMHO it would be even weirder to go straight from home into the independent life of a working twentysomething; at least the dorm is a sort of transitional period.
As far as theft goes... we had a bunch of laptop thefts earlier in the year; turns out a student from the Transitional Year Program (for "underprivileged" youth) brought some of her friends to school and let them go around the dorm stealing stuff from open rooms. The campus police caught 'em red handed on their way out of campus when they came back for more a few weeks later. But in general, if you keep your room locked when you're not there or when you're sleeping, you shouldn't have a problem at most schools.
It always made me really mad when my mother had more rules for me than my brother. Part of it was because I'm older, but some of it was because of gender.
Uh, what about me...I have a twin brother and the rules were different - my curfew was 7pm weeknights, 9pm weekends. His (and his 14 year old girlfriend's) was 10pm weeknights and midnight weekends. My parent's reasoning? Boys don't get pregnant.
...which is why my dorm door had a sticker that said "my mom was wrong..bad things _can_ happen before midnight". :lol:
It always made me really mad when my mother had more rules for me than my brother. Part of it was because I'm older, but some of it was because of gender.
Uh, what about me...I have a twin brother and the rules were different - my curfew was 7pm weeknights, 9pm weekends. His (and his 14 year old girlfriend's) was 10pm weeknights and midnight weekends. My parent's reasoning? Boys don't get pregnant.
...which is why my dorm door had a sticker that said "my mom was wrong..bad things _can_ happen before midnight". :lol:
Hmmm... Usually the older sibling has less rules.
Boys don't get pregnant, no.. but apparently your parents didn't have a problem with the possibility of your brother getting other girls pregnant :?
Boys don't get pregnant, no.. but apparently your parents didn't have a problem with the possibility of your brother getting other girls pregnant :?
I agree - that line of reasoning has always confused me. As well as the thought that girls would only get pregnant late at night.
To give my mother credit, she was more concerned about general safety, figuring my brother was better able to defend himself. However, it still bothered me.
To give my mother credit, she was more concerned about general safety, figuring my brother was better able to defend himself. However, it still bothered me.
They have a point in that reasoning - it's sad, but true that women are much more likely to be the victims of a violent crime.
My parents were always pretty good about letting me and my sister do what we wanted(within reason), but made sure they knew what was going on.
Although my sister is 2 years older, I never felt like there were any rule disparities between us.
Regarding dorm life, it depends. I spent two years in dorms. First year (University of Calgary) was AWESOME. I loved it. It was perfect. Second year (SAIT) sucked beyond belief. Rotten carpeting, musty-smelling everything, bugs, noisy plumbing and radiator, jerk garbageman slamming the dumpster around _directly_ outside my window at 6 AM every morning, extremely immature dormmates (stuff I had not seen since grade three)...
Also, people I spoke to from the first year were not at all impressed with their conditions at UofC residence second year either so a gazillion different things all come into play.
Dorm Living
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