There are some campuses in places where there just isn’t much off-campus housing, and what there was was snapped up by older students. WMU in Kalamazoo back in the '90s was that way; you had a lot of juniors and seniors still living in the dorms and it was not considered unusual.
That said, 5 years later, you should be one of the older students snapping up an off-campus residence, if it’s that much of a problem.
I don’t live in a dorm. I live in a nice little neighborhood on Long Island. Last night my neighbors were having a party. I couldn’t hear the party which was inside the house. What I could hear is the conversation every time the men came out to smoke. I’m assuming they were coming out to smoke because why else would they keep coming out to stand in the driveway which is between our houses? 15-20 minutes of conversation in Spanish (which was infuriating because if I’m being kept awake I should at least be able to eavesdrop) at 10:00, then again at 11:30 then again at around 1:00 and the finally I hear the goodbyes and car doors slamming at around 3:00. Good times.
Thankfully it’s too cold at night here for outdoor parties but that time is coming.
One question: I’ve tried the foam ear plugs and find them uncomfortable to sleep in. After an hour or so I’m awake because I want to yank the things out of my ears. Has anyone found ear plugs that are comfortable enough to wear all night?
I might have to look into the white noise thing. Soon the window unit will be in and that will produce enough white noise to block out everything but I’m going to need something between now and then.
I use really soft foam ones from Boots. There are rubber ones, silicone ones and a bunch of other types… The silicone ones I had got dirty really quickly and were not particularly effective either.
My university started a policy of four year residency for undergrads beginning the the class after me. Especially for private religious institutions, its a way for them to really underscore the idea of the college as a community.
But sadly, no one will dorm with you… (there’s a dormez-vous joke in there somewhere, trying to get out!)
5 years to get an Associate’s Degree? :dubious: Were you ever a full time student, SilverTiger?
Or it’s a way for the college to guarantee a revenue stream. Honestly, is any knowledge acquisition happening in these institutions of higher learning?
Re the OP–I agree with Indigo. At this point, the OP should be champing at the bit to get away from the “oppressive” rules of the dorm–any dorm. The thought of living off campus should not be bringing on the vapors.
The nerve of some people!
These are the best balance of comfortable/effective that I have found for beginning earplug-wearers. After a couple of years your ears will be toughened up enough for the blue Hearos which do a better job blocking sound.
How you insert them makes a big difference in comfort, too. If they hurt you too badly try tugging on the outsides to make the plug face more forward, less inward.
Given that it’s April, and the school year has two months or less to go, there’s probably not much point for you to move out now, Malleus. However if you are in school for a sixth year, I’d seriously consider off campus housing. If you’re not, then the problem is going to take care of itself, isn’t it?
I don’t remember if I was. I think so, but I took a lot of fun classes that I didn’t need. And I was a full-time student when I got my bachelor’s, mostly, except for when I was working full-time. I’m not advising taking that long, but it does happen.
Some people take longer to find their feet than others.
Why? What, exactly, about living off campus scares you?
We might be able to help. Some of the things you think are true of off-campus housing may not be true, may have been true at one time but aren’t generally true any more, or may be true of some but not all off-campus housing.
It would help to know where you are, as well. If you’re at a large school, some of us might have direct experience in the places you’d be looking for housing.
When I was in college, there were things about the so-called Real World that scared the poo out of me. A lot of those things turned out to not really be such a huge deal, once I did get out of college, or to be things that you could avoid if you didn’t want to do them. Some of your problems with living off-campus may be like that.
Aside from the alarm issue (depends on the alarm, I guess), the problem I’ve had with earplugs is that they’re only effective if I sleep on my back. If I sleep on my stomach or my side, then one ear is pressed to my pillow, and an earplug effectively telegraphs and amplifies every little movement of the side of my head against the pillow. SKRITCH-SKRITCH-SKRITCH… Again, I suppose this depends on the type and quality of the earplugs.
I’ve had much better luck with white noise, and am impatiently waiting for the weather here to warm up enough to put my A/C in my bedroom window, especially since I recently moved into a new apartment that is right on one of my town’s major thoroughfares. For the time being I’m using a small, forced-air space heater to generate the white noise, but it’s a little too quiet. Not to mention that the weather isn’t quite cold enough to justify having a heater running nonstop, so I wake up drenched in sweat.
Cartoon from MAD Magazine years ago:
Panel 1: Angry-looking man in pajamas confronting his partying neighbors in the next apartment: “Couldn’t you hear me pounding on the wall?!”
Panel 2: “Oh, that’s okay, we’re being pretty noisy ourselves!”
There’s an important life lesson here, Malleus. Sometimes you’ve just got to do stuff that you’re scared to do. For a lot of things, you can be pretty much shaking with fear the whole time you do it, and it won’t matter, all that matters is that it gets done. Sometimes, you will find out when you start to do whatever it is that it isn’t as big a deal as you thought it was. Actually, apartment or room-for-rent hunting is pretty much both of those, or it was when I did it (back in the late nineties, and I’ll tell you, it was hard to find an apartment when the Earth’s crust had not even cooled yet).
Try Googling “finding an apartment”. There will be a lot of sites like apartmentfinder.com that will give you listings, but you’re not at that point yet. Right now, what you want is the sites that have tips on how to search for an apartment. Here’s a site that might help.
What you don’t want to do is to stay in a situation that isn’t really working for you because the thought of trying an alternative scares you. I went to grad school for that reason, because I was afraid of job hunting in the Big Bad Real World. It really is a good way to make yourself absolutely fucking miserable. I’ve heard of people staying in bad or even abusive marriages for this kind of reason, and most of them don’t sound too happy with the situation.
Not to be snarky, but have you thought of just using a fan? We have a fan going in our bedroom all winter long for the white noise (I like the air flow, too).
Yeah, but decided there was no point given the way the weather works around here. It goes from “freeze your ass off” to “Dear Og it’s hotter than hell!” and back, with about two weeks of “can’t this weather make up its mind?” between the extremes. Easier and cheaper to just tough it out during those transitional periods.
Though I did just buy a laptop. I like the idea of putting some white noise software on it and keeping it near my bed at night.
Feet are pretty tricky; just fake it and cover them with tabi socks.
The off-campus housing around my university sucked. The rent may have been cheaper, I didn’t do any stringent comparisons but utilities, internet, and cable were not included if you lived offcampus, the apartments themselves were dingy, small and falling apart. On-campus, especially if you lived in newer dorms or upperclass campus apartments, they were bright, airy rooms with updated kitchens and bathroom facilities and free laundry. As I said, they’ve moved to a 4 year residency requirement, but they have a lottery for 40 people to get permission to live off-campus each semester. Last year, I understand, they had 10 people apply. Basically, living offcampus at my college was code for, I want to throw parties without having to register them.
Again, there’s only two months at most left in her school career. Really not much point in moving out of the dorm now.
If she is in school for a sixth year, she might want to look into off-campus housing. however, as Inner Stickler points out, we have no idea where she is or what her options are. They might truly suck, and living on campus might be best for her.
The OP never even actually claimed to be at University, just a dorm, and later a school. Don’t prep schools / boarding schools have dorms too?
Oh and they said their dorm has an elevator. So it’s in some kind of dense city location.
Not necessarily. That just means it’s two or more stories. The dorms I lived in were only three stories and had elevators, and they were out among the fields outside the town. Can you imagine trying to haul all your stuff up stairs? Even just carrying laundry would suck (at least for me, because I tended to do two basket loads at a time).
It seems kind of moot, because Malleus hasn’t been back in a while.