My small college had a 2 or 3 day freshman orientation before classes began. In my main memory from the first day, I was at one of the scheduled events outside and the instructor started preparing everyone to do I-shit-you-not “trust falls”. It was that moment it hit me that this wasn’t high school, I was paying to be there, and I didn’t have to put up with that crap if I didn’t want to. So without a word I walked away.
There was a mystery at my school that was to my huge advantage that never made much sense. There were traditional dorms embedded in the central campus, but they had just built five apartment buildings immediately adjacent. Each building had four suites (two per floor). Each suite had four bedrooms, two bathrooms (both with showers, one with a full-sized tub), a common area with a couch, and a kitchenette. Each 425 square foot bedroom was designed for two people, with two beds, two desks, and two closets. First year that they were available. (No premium cost over the old dorms.) Seems like they would be considered plum housing reserved for upperclassmen. But I was assigned to one as a Freshman. And I didn’t have a roommate, and neither did anyone else in the suite. All four years that I was there I was in one of those suites or another and never had a roommate and neither did anyone else. Sometimes a room wasn’t even used. Why build the new expensive housing if you aren’t going to fill it? (Students in the old dorms did have roommates. And communal bathrooms/showers.)
When doing the paperwork for attending you had to fill out a questionnaire about habits and personality that seemed to be intended to try to match you with a compatible roommate. I don’t know what I wrote that made them decide to make me one of the handful with the best accomodations available. Maybe it was just dumb luck.
The doors were steel with electronic key cards, one door to get into the apartment building, one to get into the suite, and one to get into the bedroom. I can still hear the beeps and clicks and thumps that the doors made 30 years later.