The best of times, the worst of times: off-campus living
By Michelle Murphy
Living off-campus is an eventuality that every college student looks foward to with glee. In the absence of RAs (or CFs as we're so politically correctly calling them now), you can make inordinate amounts of noise (even during quiet hours), shower with members of the opposite sex, play sports in the hall and drink illegally to your heart's content. How fabulous.
What they don't tell you about living off-campus is that there are lots of little drawbacks that add up and even make you miss Swig a bit. First: bathrooms. Strangely enough, the cleaning service provided by the university doesn't follow you to Yellow House or Cloud Nine. You actually have to clean them yourselves, and trust me, it isn't a task you're going to voluntarily do on a Saturday night.
Second: the kitchen. As terrible as Benson food may be, unless your mother has fostered in you a love for cooking, you may actually find your attempts to create a nutritious and delicious meal failing miserably. Cut to your need to steal food from the refrigerators of your domestically advanced roommates, which invariably ensues fights and occasionally violence. Not to mention the fact that meal preparation necessitates materials, which take up space, and when nine individuals need to store groceries, one refrigerator is never enough. And thus, each of you feels the need to break out your trusty, crusty, mini-fridge from freshman year and cram them all into your already too small kitchen, leaving room for only a tiny table and a floor mat.
Third: roommates. As horrific as this may sound, they don't just disappear along with community bathrooms and restricted building entry. With real estate as scarce as it is in California, rent is outrageous, and that means, unless you want to fork over some big bucks, you're going to be sharing a room for the rest of your college career. As a result, don't think that just because you no longer have a twin bed that you're going to be getting laid more often.
Some things about living off-campus are neither bad, nor good, but rather just strange. Suddenly, you are responsible for keeping track of things like the water bill and the heat, and you strangely begin to resemble your parents in ways you never dreamed possible. You enforce the five minute shower rule and yell at your roommates to bundle up because California energy is too expensive to heat the entire house all day.
Even stranger, you find that your neighbors are "older people," and you've forgotten how to respect them in the ways you were taught as a child. This is of course until you hear your fellow students shouting obscenities at the "crazy lady" with the video camera, whom you've grown to know, and you defend her because you realize she's not crazy, but rather lovely and just a bit sleep deprived.
Of course there are some wonderful things about off-campus living that completely fulfill every wonder and expectation of your early college days. The rumors of subliminally drunken evenings ring true, friendships strengthen amidst conflict and drama, and those late-night naked pillow fights can always put you in a great mood. Provided you start looking immediately (if not sooner) and avoid at all costs landlords whose names begin with "Y" and end with "oder." Moldy food and toilet duty aside, your off-campus living experience can be as fantastic as everyone says. So be you at Fairmont, Stucco, Ice House or Playground, with the right attitude (and an ample supply of beer and wine), amidst the stress of the quarter system, you might actually enjoy yourself.
Contact Michelle Murphy at (408) 554-4852 or at mdmurphy@scu.edu.