Dorms...

[Kati Compton]

Or a locked dorm room. I can't believe how many people just left their rooms unlocked. Where did they think they were??
You know how small-town folk think... ;)
I think some were "big town" folk that thought that just because Northwestern University isn't ACTUALLY in Chicago, none of the "ruffians" could get you there. Well, they'd have to pay $1.50 to use the El, anyway.

How much you want to bet that the people stealing were other students? "But they're my FRIENDS! My BESTEST BESTEST FRIENDS!"

If you can't tell, I hated living in the dorms. ;)

[karen]

If you can't tell, I hated living in the dorms. ;)

Gawd, me, too.

I can't get over the number of parents who tell me that they want their kids to live in the dorms because:

- they'll make more friends
Not necessarily. They'll definitely make more enemies.

- the dorms are safer
Uh...no. They will have all kinds of things stolen from their rooms, doors propped open at night to let 'guests' in, etc. Definitely not safer.

- they'll have a superviors/RA
hah! Sure. A grad student who is never there and a dorm director who works 8-5.

- they will get to meet people from diverse backgrounds.
Sure. And some of them will be nice and some not.

- they will have a better environment to study
Goodness, someone is stuck in the 50s aren't they?

- they will get experiences that they'll never get anywhere else...
Sure. Stepping over puke at the 2am trip to the bathroom, sharing 5 sinks with 40 others, having to trapse down the hall to have a shower, having to deal with a million other things.

I would never let one of my kids stay in a dorm...

K

[Busdriver]

As we we drift off-topic in the off-topic forum..... :wink:

I would never let one of my kids stay in a dorm...

Our son will be attending the University of Tenn where they require freshman to live on campus, as do many colleges, yes?

Do you feel strongly enough about this to reject a college for this reason alone?

[Janak Parekh]

Our son will be attending the University of Tenn where they require freshman to live on campus, as do many colleges, yes?
Most that I've seen don't, actually.

Do you feel strongly enough about this to reject a college for this reason alone?
No. Unlike Kati and Karen, I do see some upsides to living in student housing -- since there's no commute per se, it's much easier to be involved in a social life at the school. As a counterpoint, if you don't want to be involved in a social life, student housing is non-optimal.

An alternative that might capture the "best" of both worlds is apartment housing nearby. In any case, any long commute really sucks if you're an undergrad, except perhaps from a cost-of-living point of view.

--janak

[Busdriver]

We'll see how it goes the first year. Hopefully, it will be a positive experience for him.

I lived at home while attending college and I think I missed a lot by doing that. So whether he lives on campus or not, "going away" to college, we think, is a good thing.

[Kati Compton]

I recommend moving out of "home", whether into a dorm or an apartment, for college. I think it isn't a bad thing to have to spend one year in the dorm. Keeps ya from getting spoiled... ;)

[othell]

Living on campus is not that bad. I recommend that all college students do it for at least 1 year.

I lived in a dorm for 2 1/2 years and am now living off campus... but the friends that I made during that time are still with me (one of them is my Best Man for June 2004).

The enemies you could make during such a time should really be a none issue. You'll make enemies no matter where you live or go or do.

College life is great... but there are some people who just don't like it. :?

[dMores]

i can't really say much about american/canadian dorms, but i do have some insight in european student dormatories as i have spent my first couple of years in them.

some are good, some are bad. i moved twice until i got to one where i felt comfortable and got along with the others. (oh, and i had a fridge in my room !!)

so i would say that they're ok for taking the first step out of "home".

[karen]

As we we drift off-topic in the off-topic forum..... :wink:

I would never let one of my kids stay in a dorm...

Our son will be attending the University of Tenn where they require freshman to live on campus, as do many colleges, yes?

Do you feel strongly enough about this to reject a college for this reason alone?

Sons are a different animal all together...I guess I was thinking more of daughters. I might have a bit more leeway with a son. The downside of sons living off campus is that they tend to live with bathrooms that have never been cleaned. At least in a dorm they can have somewhat clean environments.

[Kati Compton]

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.

[Janak Parekh]

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.

--janak

[Pony99CA]

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.

[Janak Parekh]

(Believe it or not, I'm very shy in person.)
8O You sure? :lol:

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 (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14090) is where I split it off from.

--janak

[droppedd]

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.

[karen]

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:

[Jacob]

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 :?

[Kati Compton]

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.

[Jacob]

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.

[ctmagnus]

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.