During my senior year of high school, my math teacher begged those who were staying local for college not to dorm.
He told us it was a moneymaking scam that universities would tout as essential to the "college experience" and that you weren't missing out if you commuted the 15 minutes from your house to campus.
Because I was a stubborn 18-year-old who thought she just had to live on her own, I decided to dorm for the first two years of my college career. I've lived the past two years at home to save money - even though I'm still too stubborn to admit Mr. Oliver was right. While I don't regret choosing campus life, I will urge you locals to take the commute over a dorm room - after you at least try out life away from home.
My freshman year, I lived in a triple with two girls in Spaulding. I had never shared a room before, and I was excited to meet two girls my age who I thought would be my "BFFs 4ever" and would be bridesmaids at my wedding, just like every movie about college told me would happen.
That didn't happen. Instead, I was stuck with a girl who had such awful night terrors that she would scream and flail every night in her sleep, waking me up every hour, and I thought she might be dying. She also never really left the room, which got awkward.
My other roommate, when not bonding with me over the constant fear of our roommate's seemingly imminent death, had a boy basically living in my room. One time I even walked into my room from the shower wearing nothing but a towel and he was there sitting on her bed while she was nowhere in sight.
I swear he didn't have a home and he didn't understand why I was peeved when he would ask her if her roommates had ever heard her having sex while they're in the room as the bed constantly squeaked past midnight. (For the record, I heard every time.)
So instead, I spent most of my time bumming the floors of my friends with single rooms to escape, making pillow beds on the linoleum floors and messing up my back because I thought it was better than the alternative. I thought my friends' neighbors, who would also have loud sex - complete with screams in foreign languages - or who would throw dinner plates at the wall because of a break up, were much better than actually sleeping in my own bed.
I remember getting kicked out of the Katharine Cornell Theatre because my freshman-year fling and I needed a private space away from our roommates that never left. We didn't notice there was a window-wall and an RA on the terrace who could see everything - I don't think we've ever run so fast.
Another time, a friend thought he'd play a joke on me by stealing my room key off my lanyard at dinner one night. He meant to return it by the end of the meal, but for some reason, that didn't happen. I spent my whole night retracing every step I made that day, neurotically checking every place on campus I visited.
I even stopped my laundry mid-cycle to make sure it wasn't in my jeans pocket (to the 2009-10 residents of Spaulding, I'm really sorry for breaking that washing machine and leaving an ocean-like puddle on the floor). After about two hours of searching and apologizing to my RA, I collapsed in the hallway outside my room and texted my friend. He remembered then that he had my key.
One wall of my room that year was also made fully of glass. Though I'm sure that made for some interesting views for my neighbors across the courtyard, I didn't think anything of it until a crack took up half the window one morning. My only guess is that someone drunkenly threw something at our window, and we lived for a week with a partly shattered wall and fears of cold nights before Campus Living sent someone to fix it.
Despite a less-than-stellar freshman year living situation, I opted to live with a friend sophomore year. We had a bad lottery pick and had to resort to living in Governors, and I still am programmed to say, "No, I'm not an honors student" when I preface my time living there.
The room was a quarter of the size of my triple, but my roommate and I made the most of our space somehow. My neighbors would shower and then blow-dry their hair every morning at 3 a.m., and the walls were paper-thin.
The epitome of my sophomore year dorming experience, though, had to be the night I went to Rochester with a few friends. I had ended up leaving my wallet, keys and all my stuff in my roommate's car and she went to Brockport while I hitched a ride back to Buffalo with other concert-goers.
My friend and I got back to Governors and, in the midst of our search throughout the whole complex for an RA who wasn't out partying on South Campus to open my dorm door, we stumbled upon a floor party. A mustache party.
It was almost surreal. I stopped to ask where the hall office was (Governors is the world's hardest maze to navigate, I'm convinced), and I didn't notice the big, fake paper mustaches upon everyone's face until one boy turned around to answer my question. They clearly thought nothing of it, and this was supposedly totally normal behavior.
It turned out to be a good laugh in the morning when we calmed down and realized how weird that situation was. The rest of the year was spent hiding from my RA when I went out on Main Street, getting sexiled too many times to count and dealing with my floormates when I would let boys use our locked girls' bathroom.
Sometimes I wish I didn't dorm for two years so that I could pay off my college loans faster, but I wouldn't trade the memories for anything. I realize how good I have it at home with my parents and how having my own car is actually better than having my own place, but I know living on my own - even for a little bit - forced me to grow in ways I couldn't at home.
If you're from Buffalo, give dorming a try - at least for a year. It could be for you or you might realize you like mom's home cooking too much. But no matter which you choose, college is what you make of it.
And if you were at that Governors mustache party: email me. I think we could be great friends.
Email: rebecca.bratek@ubspectrum.com
