Dorm Daze

The other day I was jogging through campus, and I had a nostalgic moment I never thought I would have. I was looking at the dorm rooms, and I realized I would never live in that environment again. Here I am, finally living in my own apartment (which I still love!), about to really set out on my own, and I am reminiscing about being cramped into a 10’ x 6’ room with another person?!? But if you really think about it, they were simpler times. You had to worry about getting grades, getting alcohol, getting chicks (or dudes, depending on your sex and persuasion), and occasionally getting sleep. That was it! I could list the things most of us have to worry about these days, but it would push all of the posts below this one off of the page and into the archives! So, as a tribute to dorm living, here are the best parts that I remember (and trust me, at this point, I just barely remember them) from living in a college dorm. For the sake of nostalgia, we will only be mentioning the fun parts of dorm living, and completely ignoring the tedious, annoying, and sometimes horrific parts of it. If you’d like, please add your own glorious memories in the comments section!

-When you were hungry, you didn’t go to the grocery store or have to figure out what to cook, you walked to the nearest dining hall and likely ordered something fried. Often times it was in your very own dorm!

-If you were really hungry, you microwaved some Easy Mac or Ramen Noodles. Vitamins and actual Nutritional Content be damned!

-Girls who didn’t eat enough to use up the entire minimum meal plan. They would be left with $200 at the end of the semester that had to be spent on food, and they would take you to buy a year's supply of Gatorade, Protein Bars, and Moon Pies…ok, maybe not Moon Pies, no one actually eats those.

-Coed dorms. ‘Nuff said.

-Ok, not ‘nuff said. The occasional sight of a girl in a towel walking from the bathroom to her room. Call me a perv if you want, but if you were a guy, you looked, and you enjoyed it too. And if you were girl, you know a part of you liked that we were looking. I don’t remember there being any rule against bringing your clothes or pajamas into the bathroom to change into afterwards, but I could be mistaken. (Completely unnecessary and gratuitous picture of cute girl in towel directly below.)

-Shower shoes…don’t know why, just miss them.

-The walk of shame. If you didn’t make at least one of these, you didn’t really attend college, despite what your diploma might say.

-Being able to walk down the hall to the common area, courtyard, wherever and find a conversation, a game of euchre, or whatever.

-The recruiting and organizing of a volleyball/football/drinking game was the matter of maybe 5 minutes.

-Being 5 feet away from one of your best friends, even he was messy, annoying, and typically slept with a noisy knee-mover contraption because he couldn’t seem to stop blowing out his ACL (you know who you are).

-Typing AIM (can’t believe we used ever used that antiquated technology) messages to said roommate when he was directly behind me and talking for 2 hours before going to sleep because we had the same wacky and random sense of humor and, as previously mentioned, sleep was a luxury, not a necessity.

-The male equivalent to an air freshener: Window open, fan pointed in, drier sheet on the back of the fan.

-Setting up your room to maximize that 10’ x 6’ space. I typically took control of this, and I think I was actually pretty damn good at it.

-Playing “how many beers can fit in a mini-fridge”…our record was 150, it looked like a Dr. Dre video in there!

-Drinking as much as you could before going to the bars because we did not have the legal ability and/or financial means to purchase any alcohol at the bar.

-College! I love teaching class, and I know its easy to be nostalgic about tests and lectures now that I am on the other side. But trust me, its easier to take a test than to write a fair one, not to mention making sure that you effectively teach everything that is going to be on it.