My Friend's Dorm Room example essay topic

1,691 words
College is the stepping stone from High School to the real world. College is intended not only to teach us knowledge, but also to prepare us for the next part of life. Not all college students get this preparation though. Those students are the ones that live at home and commute to school every day. These students miss out on the entire college culture.

Being a commuter myself, I almost feel left out. If it were not being in the rigorous architecture program which demands hours and hours of studio work, I probably would not have meet ten percent of the people that I have met. Walking into my design studio for class, I hear people talking about what happened the night before in Goodyear, the freshman dormitory on South Campus. I am always intrigued to know what goes on daily at the dorms. Being as intrigued as I was, I decided to spend one night with my friend to try to get a feel of dorm culture One of the main goals of an architecture program is to teach the future architects to observe well. Now being in this program for only a semester has changed the way I view things.

One thing that I noticed, from an architectural standpoint, is that the dorms are probably the poorest designed spaces on any college campus. Even I.M. Pei, one of the best architects in the world, could not design a dormitory that was spacious and efficient. That dorm is none other than the easily navigated Governors Complex. The spacious double rooms are much smaller than my own room. I do not understand how people can survive for long periods of time crammed into a small room with another person without going clinically insane. Fortunately I did not stay in Governors, for if I did I would have spent most of the night trying to find my friend's dorm room.

Instead, I decided to spend the night at Goodyear Dorm with my friend from architecture. Aside from Governors, the Goodyear dorm was fairly easy to find my way around. I was impressed at seeing the double rooms in Goodyear compared to Governors. The rooms were much bigger but still not large enough. Sleeping is another story.

The word dormitory was given to this building because it is where people are supposed to sleep. The irony in this situation is that good sleep is not possible in the dorms. There is no way to get to bed at a decent time on any college campus. There are always things to do. People chat on-line until the wee hours of the morning. You can always download anything that you want form the residential network.

This is probably the only thing to which I can give credit, the high-speed connection in all of the dorm rooms. The connection is reason enough to live on-campus. You will definitely download your moneys worth of mp 3's, movies, software, and almost any thing that you want. Their, the dorm dwellers, agenda involves a lot of over-priced Coca-Cola products, staring at the computer screen and gazing into the TV if you are lucky enough that you roommate can afford one.

Hearing the annoying little noises from the AOL Instant Messenger for hours upon hours of the day is liable to make anyone go crazy. It's like this strange pseudo-vampire lifestyle. You barely eat any good food on the campus so you turn pale from the lack of nutrition. We already know that nobody sleeps in the dorms so the creepy looking eyes and strange vibe will come in effect. Dormitories are an insomniac's dream. Eating habits are affected heavily by the dorms.

Every night at 2 in the morning you get as hungry as a Bosnian and you have to go to the vending machine and spend more money that you do not have for an over-priced snack that will not do you any good. The college will never actually put something healthy in the vending machines on campus. This might actually cause better grades in some students. Other students probably will never be affected by healthy foods because they are to busy drinking themselves into a stupor to realize that Sal's Pizzeria near South Campus is probably the worst pizza known to mankind. Leaving the dorm is an activity in itself. If you can walk down the hall without looking in anyone's room or making any sound louder than a mouse then you should be all right.

As you walk past rooms with open doors, your first instinct is to look in the room. What you will probably see is someone playing Grand Theft Auto Three on the Playstation 2 Game Console. Now everyone else is bound to have an expensive game system that you cannot possibly afford. Now once you get out of the halls, and close to the door, you will check to see if you have everything that you need.

You " ll need keys, ID, bag, books, a map, an umbrella, sunglasses, insulin, a snake bite kit, mace, and your best friend that you made just because he is the only guy on your floor with a car. In Buffalo, if you want to do anything amusing, you must own a car. Even if you are trying to go to class, the split campus helps you out a whole lot, especially when the busses are on time which come to find out is not too often. Walking on campus is aggravating in itself. It is not the other people walking that bother me, it is the people that have to use roller blades, bikes or skateboards the anger me. Now people on roller blades I dislike but I accept, people on bikes I have urges to clothesline but tolerate.

People on skateboards have a value just below medically retarded nazis. It must be explained to them that skateboards were cool when we were 11 and even then they weren't that cool. Another thing that I just loved about the dorm life is the food that they serve in the dinning halls. The only dish that actually tastes like it is supposed to is Lucky Charms. I think the university supplies them with a blender and unlimited horse meat mixed with some retired circus animals. The key to making the menu fresh and exciting is the food coloring.

The charming and buck-toothed lunch ladies, who have more facial hair than your father ever will, proudly announce, 'Yesterday we had chicken nuggets and today we present to you blue chicken chunks that are totally unrelated to the nugget dish we served you just yesterday. We are serious; they have nothing to do with each other. I stake my hair net on it. You can have extra blue in yours.

' And the ladies (who really seem to love living in the exciting scooping career) refuse to serve more than what fits on a toothpick. You can't just ask for a large portion, you have to ask for 'more than the offensive line could consume this semester. ' Then you get a second blue nugget. This food really gets you thinking about your mothers cooking and how you did not have to pay an outrageous price for an excellent meal. Then you get to come home to your room. My friend lives in a double which is connected to another double by a bathroom.

Not that having your own bathroom is bad but when the University expects four guys to clean it every week then it becomes more of a safety hazard. I have never smelled a worse smell than that coming from their bathroom in my entire life. I cringed when I walked in there to take my shower after my night of no sleep. It's as big as a Tupperware container.

It has 3 temperatures, hot, really hot, and insanity. One my friend's roommate flushed the toilet while I was in the shower. The temperature went to skin removal levels and I went blind for a few minutes. That's another thing, unless you picked your roommate you got stuck with the closet case that the boarding office apparently found compatible with me. My friend's roommate is something else. He reminded me of Chewbacca's considerably less attractive estranged midget cousin.

A wo okie also has better control of the English language. I was informed that there were two kinds of roommates, the one who sharpens knives while he watches you sleep (my friend's), and the one who asks you what it's like to go outside (also my friend's). The two guys that share the disgusting bathroom with my friend and his roommate live an intensely Rastafarian lifestyle. In an attempt to put Cheech and Chong to shame, their bong is a centerpiece of the room that they clean with wadded textbook pages. They apparently smoke to Bob Marley at 5 AM. After this experience I am not too sure about what I think of dorm life.

As much as it grossed me out, aggravated me beyond belief, and made me lose a night of sleep, I had fun. It was a different kind of amusement from going out and partying. It was a fun that can never be achieved while living with your parents no matter how much you frequent the dorms. Living in the dorms is a completely different world of college. Dorm life is a world with few rules, with nobody looking over your shoulder and telling you what to do. The true college experience is a bridge that connects childhood to adults.