Adventures of Dorm Life

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

So, this is yr irregular Aberdonian (as in wayupnorth) checking in with her two pence.

As a postgraduate, I was supposed to be in the postgraduate flats. But I get an e-mail saying tha they’re full up and won’t you come live up in Hillhead, instead?

Hillhead is a concrete freshers prison. I’m told there are other postgraduates up there, but I haven’t met any. I share a flat with three first years- English, Thai and German. There are instructions near our phone on how to answer in the last two languages. We almost had a Swede, but she said she wasn’t coming back unless she couldn’t find anything else. Our Irish lecturer assures me we’ve seen the last of her and has warned me off the coffee and believing a guy called Steven. Steven, in turn, has warned me off believing the lecturer.

The dirtiest toilet in Scotland exists. It lives in our flat and the electric doesn’t work. The other toilet has light, but doesn’t flush and has no latch on the door. And when we tried to leave to tell someone this, we found that we’d all been locked in our flat and had to call the porter to come get us out.

We have also discovered the “rules” for living in Aberdeen. You do not go through Seaton Park at night. Junkies. You do not go to the harbour at night. Junkies. I am 40 mintues walk from the harbor, so that doesn’t bother me. Seaton Park, however, is just past the rubbish bins below my window.

On my side of the window (not the junkies’) is a radiator. Which works, in theory. When I try to turn it on, the entire pipe turns. The man comes to look at it and tells me " oh, aye, it’s broken" and I say “so, we’re going to do what about this?” And he looks at me like I’ve got the answer.

Since we’re still in fresher’s week (just ending, actually) I hear them coming back at all hours of the evening. Laughing, screaming. There’re tire-marks on the lawn. My Londoner flatmate informs me that she might not be coming back, as she’s gotten into a much posher school.

I think I love Scotland.

Although, I told my lecturer that- well, I said “Aberdeen loves me!” as an explanation of why I was here.

He gently said “oh, no dear, it doesn’t. Trust me.”

al

22

My freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was in an all-women’s dorm referred to (for its many locked doors, confusing layout, and all-female situation) as “the Virgin Vault”. It was an old building, lots of wood and plaster in it, and so the very few fire alarms (perhaps two or three in a year) that we had were taken extremely seriously.

The following year, I applied for a single room, and ended up in one in the coed (men and women on the same floor) dorms on the southeast side of campus. These were big cinderblock constructions, and so were much safer. The fire alarm situation there was rather different. Not only were there many more actual smoke/fire situations that set off alarms, but there were also drunken students who would pull the fire alarm for fun, or pull the fire extinguisher, causing the resulting particulate cloud to set off the alarm. On average, we had one nearly every Friday and Saturday night (occasionally twice in a night), and not uncommonly on a Thursday night too, since that was considered an unofficial start to the weekend.

It got to the point where one could occasionally sleep through a fire alarm, or at least fall back to sleep soon after it started and sleep through the rest of the blaring klaxon. Especially in the winter months, it wasn’t uncommon for people to stay in their rooms through the alarm. After all, one of the other dorms had a real fire in one of the rooms, and due to the construction, that room was gutted and only some smoke damage affected nearby rooms, from wafting under the small crack under the door.

The rumor went around that the fire department would check rooms on the floor that had the alarm going off, and would fine hundreds of dollars against any student found still there. Fortunately, you could tell from the initial alarm pattern what floor it was on, by counting the pattern of buzzes. If it was on your floor or one immediately adjoining, you left. If not, back to sleep, alarm still blaring.

23

I kinda like dorm life myself. I have a pretty good dorm, with tons of nice people, loads of paintings and decorations everywhere, and comfy furniture (except in the study lounges). Everybody follows quiet hours and the people who do get drunk have the decency to go do so in one of the frat houses.

Maybe I’m just lucky.

24

i thought i was the only irregular Aberdonian on here. Sorry to hear that you got put into Hillhead, that place truly is a dump.

i couldnt tell if you were being sarcastic about loving Scotland or not but i hope youre having a good time in our fair city, and i can only say we’re not all junkies, and some of us can even fix a radiator :D.

25

I went to a small, extremely conservative Catholic liberal arts college. Which means, of course, that it was populated by very well-educated alcoholics. So when you tiptoed through the dorm lounge at 3:00 am on Saturday and found yourself being accosted by someone who had been worshipping Our Lady of the Holy Spirits a bit too enthusiastically, you could never be sure if he was going to practice a few rugby tackles or start spouting Aquinas.

We had two all male dorms, and these carried on a vicious rivalry that was (like everything else there) traditional. The denizens of these two hallowed halls conducted periodic raids on each others’ dorms, dispensing water balloons, shaving cream, and plenty of testosterone-fueled (and often highly creative) verbal taunts.

During one particular raid that I was trying desperately to ignore in order to finish a paper, two guys in ski masks sauntered somewhat apologetically into my room (having just picked my lock), and very politely asked to borrow my window. From which they proceeded to fire bottle rockets down into the crowd of raiders collected in the courtyard. After lighting the third rocket, they dropped it on the floor, stomped on it to try and snuff out the fuse, and deposited it in my roommate’s trash can. Which caught fire about ten minutes later. :eek:

Ah, yes, I remember it well.

26

oh, no…I do like the fair granite city. The Uni itself is beautiful. I’m thinking of moving into my office. Maybe sleeping on my desk. My flatmates are disappearing. By January it will only be myself and the Thai girl.

I’ve only just arrived last week and have strange men trying to coax me into ‘just half a lager- come on’ In fact, one is still e-mailing me because he met me when I was very drunk. But he’d met me at a second party. I’d gotten drunk at the first and was only having a cider at the second. (And then went on to a third…but he must think I’m a cheap date from that cider)

I still get lost downtown, but find comfort in the little green Christmas tree sign of the King St. Spar.

27

At my (small, northeastern, liberal arts) university, the mysterious graffiti that appeared everywhere was “THE YONGY-BONGY-BO.” I know who did it, but I’ll never tell (no, it wasn’t me).

Now we’ll see who on this board (a) graduated from the same university around the same time as me, and (b) is an Edward Lear fan.