I don’t understand. Where am I supposed to sleep, if not in a dorm?
Anyway, my ranting has made me feel better for the meanwhile. That, and Passover break. The only people next to my room at home are my youngest brother and his rats, and they don’t make noise. (And I’m not kidding about including the rodents there. When the mice were alive, they would run on their wheel all night, and unless it was freshly oiled it would *squeak *. They were in the bathroom all the way down the hall from me, and I still couldn’t sleep unless the door was closed).
Yay for home, comfortable beds, and lack of skyscrapers. (The elevators in that dorm are worth a pitting or three of their own). Good night, all.
I assume you have a computer. Download some white noise (you can find it free) (actually I found ‘pink noise’ to work better for me), put it in a playlist so it repeats two or three times, and turn it on right as you go to bed.
You could try pulling the bed out so it’s at least not touching the walls if the noise is so loud it’s vibrating the bed.
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I don’t understand. Where am I supposed to sleep, if not in a dorm?
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There are people who will rent an apartment or a house with friends. It should be noted, that this doesn’t necessarily solve the problem and may very likely be more expensive (I moved out of my apartment into the dorms when I went back to college, because it include a food allowance and ended up much cheaper).
Try some kind of white noise? For me, a fan blowing at full is usually enough to cover ambient sounds. Since it is constant the brain just filters it out after a few minutes.
The other option is to try to fall asleep listening to a podcast. Back episodes of This American Life usually puts me out in a few minutes.
Ahhhh, college life and late night noise…brings back memories…it’s a good thing I did not possess a firearm then, I can’t be sure I wouldn’t have used it…
Got a room in a house with a bunch of random guys, one of them was the sidekick to this other guy who didn’t actually live there but was there all the time. None of the guys in the house actually really interacted much, we all came from very different places, so to speak.
Turns out not-living-there-guy and sidekick were drug dealers - not petty dealers, mid-level importers - whatever, it was a pain because back then we didn’t have cell phones so the house phone was constantly ringing with people trying to score. Thankfully, no one ever came to the house to score.
Anywho, guy and sidekick were gone most of the time, but they seemed to always come home buzzed up after the bars closed at night with their lady friends - huskysmoker and giggles. Then they would start in with the rowdy noisy for about two hours before settling in for the bangfest.
My bedroom was on the ground floor just off the living room so it was all happening in the room right next to me! Geez…
I’m also someone who needs silence to sleep well. And I’ve learned that silence is impossible, whether sharing a home with family, just pets, or attached housing. Well, not even that - in a house by myself in the middle of nowhere, there are still night critters that make noise outside.
The solution I figured out about 10 years ago was to burn a 60-minute white noise track to CD and play it on repeat. I sleep very well, the white noise is far better than silence, IMHO.
Podcasts or audiobooks work like magic for me, especially if I wake up in the middle of the night because I’m worrying about something. Hey, if I’m listening to Ira Glass (or Josh ‘n’ Chuck from Stuff You Should Know) tell me about someone else’s problems…
Audiobooks by soft-spoken Brits seem to work well, too. I can’t wait to get to bed tonight, and drift off to Neil Gaiman reading his own stuff.
Er, um, off campus. In a shared apartment or a bachelor apartment.
I don’t want to be snarky but you’ve been in college 5 years and don’t understand you can move off campus? Even when it’s specifically mentioned, by another poster? Cannot even imagine where you’re supposed to sleep, if not in a dorm? For me, this is the most surprising thing in this thread.
More surprising than that someone with such sleep issues, as needing absolute silence, would think a dorm was a good idea! Can you share with us what college this might be?
I guess I’ve heard about people doing that, but I think most people dorm. I think. I don’t know everyone. I would be too scared. I want to be close to the school in a school building.
I think previous years I was just lucky. I have to say, I don’t mind when someone plays the piano downstairs. Music is nice. Most of the time there isn’t a problem. The neighbors don’t scream every night, and usually for not as long. it’s just that particular night apparently everyone decided to be noisy.
I’m not sure the proceding paragraph makes sens,e but I have really low blood sugar at the moment and I can’t think stright.
This seems so odd to me. If this happened in my dorm, you’d call the R.A. and have them tell them that it was past the hours where that sort of stuff was acceptable. I mean, you couldn’t even have guests past midnight unless they signed in. I mean, sure, most of us snuck people in, but it would not be in our best interest to not make so much noise that the RA might have to come by.
And this was a state school, not some religious fundie place. And it’s not like the RA’s were stodgy guys. But being so noisy that other people can hear you at night was absolutely not tolerated. I mean, those places were built with the occupants in mind, so they wouldn’t carry noise.
Dorm is a noun. You cannot “dorm”. You must live in a dorm or move out of a dorm etc. Please do not do this (use perfectly good English nouns as verbs).
You’re too scared to move out of a dorm? Where is this college? :dubious:
How have you ever gotten ANY sleep at all in your dorm?
5 years? What degree are you going for?
Back in my day (a long time ago), most people lived in a dorm the first 2 years of uni, then moved out–to a sorority or frat or an apartment/house. Very few stayed around, and those that did were RA or SAs.
Clearly, your uni situation is set up perhaps differently than most American unis, but it’s still odd enough for the rest of us (Canadian, Brits etc) to do this:
Taking five or more years for a bachelors, if you don’t have any prior college credits, isn’t unusual. Hell I took five years to get my associates, but I was goofing around a lot.
I get the impression Malleus is young, inexperienced, and shy. I would say cut her some slack, but I don’t expect that from Dopers.
Malleus, make friends with your RA. Talk to them about housing options for next semester / year and what people usually do. Moving into an apartment would have the added bonus of starting your renting history and building credit, which will come in handy later.
Like I said though, I found living in the dorms to be cheaper than renting a place at least in the city the college was in, especially once you took into account the included food, cable, and internet.
What utter nonsense. If you can camp, you can dorm.
Malleus, you have my sympathies. While I do not require absolute silence for sleeping, I do need something coming close to it. I thanked the heavens when I was in college that my dorms and apartments, with the exception of one building had nice thick cinderblock walls. I miss those walls.
Oh come on, English is defined by standard usage. If we’re talking about perfectly good English nouns that cannot be modified in any way, it would be “dormitory”, not “dorm”. For that matter, it would be “One may not ‘dorm’”.
Speaking of people who are rude late at night, my neighbor started just pounding on my door at 3 AM last Thursday. Luckily I was still up playing my drum set, but what if I was asleep? He would have woke me up!
She’s in her 20s at least if she’s been there for nearly 5 years. Time to sack up or shut up. By that age, you’d expect someone to stop suckling on the teat of assigned housing and meal plans, and start planning to get the fuck out and stand on their own two feet - especially if the end of their schooling career is visible on the horizon. If she’s still fretting about “Whatever shall I do, wherever shall I go?” at this late hour, then she’s in for a rude awakening when the college gravy train runs out.
