Welcome To Your New Home

The College Dorm Survival Guide: How to Survive and Thrive in Your New Home Away from Home
by Julia DeVillers

The Ultimate Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the Dorm.

Dorm life offers you a great chance to meet new people and try new things. But leaving the comforts of home for the first time to enter the roommate-having, small-room-sharing, possibly-coed-bathroom-using world of the dorms can be overwhelming and intimidating.

The College Dorm Survival Guide offers expert advice and the inside scoop on:

• Choosing the right residence hall for you
• Getting along with your roommate (and handling conflict)
• Bathroom, laundry, and dining hall survival
• Dealing with stress, depression, and safety issues

From avoiding the dreaded Freshman 15 to decorating your space, this informative and funny guide gives experts' advice on everything you need to know to enjoy dorm living to the fullest.

Chapter 1

The day you enter your college dorm, your life changes. This is no ordinary experience you're signing up for. Think about it. It's bizarre. A whole lot of people, pretty much the same age, all living together. You'll meet strangers who will become your friends (or not). You'll share late-night talks and early morning classes. You'll have a space to share, decorate, and turn into home for nine months out of the year. And, most important of all, you'll learn something new every single day because of the people and experiences you can only find in the dorms.

Where else can you find hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of similar-aged people living in close quarters, sharing not only residential space, but also social areas, meal times, classes, and countless other growth opportunities?

- Joan Schmidt, associate director of Residence Life at Central Michigan University and past president of the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International (ACUHO-I)

Life doesn't get better than a bus at your front door, three meals a day, an endless array of friends and no utility bills to pay.

- Tosha Jansen-Conkey, senior at University of Kansas

Your Dorm-I-Tude

There are tons of different dorms and tons of people with different attitudes and personalities about to move into each one. How do you feel about moving to the dorms?

a. Yeah! COLLEGE! Freedom! I don't care what my dorm is like-I'm freeeee!

b. I'm an introvert. Not used to having all these people around. But I'll give it a shot.

c. Study, study, books, books ... where's the study carrel? Which way to the library?

d. Okay. I've lived at home all my life. Some sleepovers. One week at Scout sleepaway camp. WTF? I'm cool. I'm legally an adult. I can handle this. This is weird. That guy looks weird. That RA is a little too perky. That girl looks kinda cool. This is surreal. I'm here. Now what?

Basically, most students go in hoping and expecting the best of their dorm experience. And that's great. Go in expecting perfection, though, and you're going to be disappointed. Living in your house wasn't perfect, right? Dorm life won't be, either - and that's to be expected. In a way it's not natural to suddenly be sharing your home with total strangers. It can be really, really fun. Really, really exciting. Just go in realizing that it's also hard to adjust to living in a dorm - and that's okay.

When you first get to campus, you'll probably want to immediately leave the dorm and meet lots of people and make connections, right? Well, you might want to reconsider. Of course you should meet people, but having a roommate and sharing a bathroom can be a really valuable part of the college experience. It will teach you how to share your space with others, and it also leads to some serious bonding. Some lifelong friendships can be made over sharing a cramped room or common area.

What's A Dorm?

Throughout this book, you'll notice that the terms dorm and residence hall are used pretty much interchangeably. Dorm comes from dormitory, which has traditionally been a place where students just eat and sleep. The word dormitory can make you think of a small, dingy, sterile room. So not pleasant.

However, people who live and work in the college environment use the term residence halls now. That's because today's "dorms" are so much more than they used to be. They're places where you can become part of a community, interact with faculty, hang with your neighbors, and learn new things. It sounds way more appealing - and it is.

The Right Dorm for You

Dorms have different living arrangements, different personalities, different reputations. Dorms can have their own culture, history, traditions, and even their own values. During orientation or an Admissions tour, you may hear that one dorm is the party dorm, one's the geek dorm, one's the Greek dorm ...

As a freshman, you usually go where they put you. Some colleges have lotteries and you take your chances. Some colleges let you make requests. Sometimes you'll even get your request. More likely? You won't.

This was the scene at my precollege orientation when we got our dorm assignments:

Cute guy: @#$#, I'm in the loser dorm!

Non-party-girl girl: @#$#, I'm in the party dorm!

Stuck-up-looking girl: @$#%, I'm in the way-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere dorm!

Punk girl: @#$#, I'm in the preppy dorm!

Non-jock guy: @$#%, I'm in the jock dorm!

Me: YEAH! I got the dorm I requested! YEAH!!!

Jump forward one year later: I moved to the way-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere dorm that turned out to be really fun - rooming with the stuck-up-looking girl, who turnd out to be my new best friend. The dorm I requested, which I lived in as a freshman, didn't turn out to be the best fit for me.

The moral is: Don't freak when you get your dorm assignment, even if it's not your first choice. Keep an open mind.

Don't let the building's reputation become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dorms can change every year with a new crop of freshmen, especially because many of them didn't choose the dorm but were placed there, just like you. The "study dorm" can change to the "Greek dorm" if a lot of the freshmen pledge. The "Greek dorm" can change to the "study dorm" if a lot of the fraternity brothers move to their fraternity houses. So, if you're more of a homebody and get placed in the "party dorm," don't think you have to rise to the challenge and live up to that reputation. Chances are that you'll find other students living all around you who think the hard-partying life is overrated, too. Or if it's the reverse, you might find a lot of peo- ple you can study with and relax with, but there will definitely be other people you can bond with over the nightlife.

So Many Choices

These days, there are hundreds of choices when it comes to types of dorms. Schools are building like crazy and renovating existing spaces to meet students' needs.

If you want to know more about the different dorms, check them out beforehand. Walk through some when you're touring the campus. Or go online. Many schools have pictures, descriptions, even virtual tours of the rooms on their websites.

If you try to make a request for a specific dorm, consider other factors besides reputation, says Katie Boone, the director of Housing and Residential Services at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Consider:

• Do you want to be close to the library so you'll be more inclined to go there?
• Will things like pool tables in common lounges be an attraction or a distraction?
• Does a dorm with a particular theme appeal to you?
• Are you looking for a quieter environment?
• Do you want to be close to a gym or fitness facility?
• Do you want to be close to a certain building because of your major?

Copyright © 2006 by Julia DeVillers. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Julia DeVillers is the author of several books, including Girlwise: How to Be Confident, Capable, Cool, and In Control and How My Private, Personal Journal Became a Bestseller. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.