Two friends in a dorm room watching something on their computer screen.
If you are a college-bound freshman, you’re most likely dealing with many transitions in your life. Aside from parting with your friends or moving to a different state, you may also feel nervous and worried about how to adjust to university life, particularly your new living and housing arrangements.
There are many choices of which living arrangements to go for, with residential halls, dormitories, and affordable apartments like American Avenue being common among freshies. The prospect of sharing a room with others can be both exciting and daunting.
If it’s your first time living outside your parents’ home, it will take a few weeks to get used to your new situation. But you can take the negative out of the equation when you’re well prepared for residence hall living even long before you set foot in your new university home.
To ease your worries, here are a few tips and tricks to help you through and adjust to residence hall living.
Learn How To Leave Your Door Open
Don’t take this first tip literally, although it doesn’t hurt to leave your door open for a few hours a day while you’re not doing anything serious – like studying or napping.
When you opt to stay in a residence hall, keep the possibility of becoming friends with your roommates. Make friends with your neighbors if you have a single room. You can’t meet new people if you’re always hiding inside your space. Instead, take a different perspective and see it from a more positive angle. One of the advantages of residence halls is that it’ll be easier to socialize, as you’re sure to have lots of co-students living in the same hall.
Residence halls are a great avenue to meet new people, develop good and long-lasting friendships throughout uni, and maybe bonds that will last even after you graduate from your dream university. It’s normal to be shy at first, but once you get to know your roommates and other residence hall dwellers, you’ll soon have a circle that you’ll feel most comfortable with.
Expect A Bit Of Noise
The key to surviving living in a residence hall is to be realistic with your expectations. This isn’t like your parents’ home, where you have control over factors like the noise. Expect a little noise and distractions from time to time, especially after school hours, when all the students make their way back to their rooms.
You wouldn’t want to be known as that grumpy neighbor who keeps complaining about the noise. As long as it’s still tolerable and reasonable, you’ll eventually get used to it. Studying for your final exams is, of course, an exception. You can nicely ask noisy neighbors to lower their noise.
Along with expecting a bit of noise, you also have to be prepared for the fact that privacy may be hard to come by. This is especially true when you’re sharing a room with others. This can be pretty jarring for many freshmen, but like the noise, it’s not one you won’t get used to.
The thought of sharing your sleeping, bathing, and eating space with other people you haven’t met before can be scary, particularly for introverts. However, it’ll be easier for you to adjust to your college life in a residence hall once you expect this to be a reality.
Master The Showering And Laundry Cycles
Female College Student Carrying Box Moving Into Accommodation
One of the problems experienced in residential halls happens when many residents use the water all at once to shower or do their laundry, and the water supply starts to go slow. This can be frustrating, particularly when you’re in a rush or on a tight schedule.
Mastering the showering and laundry cycles will be hard at first. But, give it a few months, and then you’ll already master when those hours are. You can then tailor your own shower and laundry hours accordingly to beat those times when the water supply may be affected.
Remember, you don’t need to be too rigid with your schedule. Instead, be flexible and allow for sudden schedule changes to avoid unnecessary stress.
Enjoy The Available In-House Amenities
Many parents send their children to residence halls as freshmen to make that transition to independence easier. This is why choosing the right residential hall equipped with all the amenities you need is also very important. Don’t rush the process; otherwise, you may wind up in a residence hall that doesn’t have what you need.
Some residence halls will have a kitchen on each floor, and some even inside the students’ rooms. In the absence of a kitchen, meals will be served in the cafeteria. Laundry stations may also be present in the residential hall.
Whatever amenities you have, enjoy it. Make the most of them so your life in the residential hall will feel like your real home. This also forms a good training ground or foundation for moving to more independent setups in the future, like living in your own apartment.
Be Prepared With The Shower Essentials
Not all rooms in a residence hall will be equipped with their own bathroom. The usual setup is to have shared shower areas and bathrooms on every floor. If such is the case, sharing a communal shower and toilet with so many other residents may be a challenge. It’s not always the cleanest setup, particularly if you’re accustomed to having your own bathroom at home.
Thus, prepare yourself with all the shower essentials. You’ll need your own toilet basket with toiletries. Then, be sure to have your own bathroom slippers as well.
On top of that, don’t forget to practice toilet etiquette. Since you live with other people with different personalities, take it upon yourself to be sanitary as a sign of respect for others.
Keep Some Food And Water In Your Room
For your optimal comfort, it’s a wise move to keep your little pantry in your room. You don’t necessarily need to have a fridge, although a small one will be nice to have, too. In the absence of one, you can always keep a water dispenser, so you at least have your own water supply. Then, stock up on your favorite snacks.
Having food and water in your room is a life-saver, especially during long, crunch hours of studying and exam seasons. Ordering food may be convenient, but if you want to save some of your student allowances, it’s wise to stock up on your favorites instead.
Remember To Wash Your Sheets
This may seem like an all-too-obvious thing, but it can be so easy to neglect your sheets between hours of classes, study sessions, and weekend university parties.
Keep in mind that changing your sheets is part of basic hygiene. You can’t welcome new friends in your room when it smells so bad from dirty sheets. Moreover, having a clean and organized room can help improve your ability to focus and study. The positive and happy hormones will keep coming, when your room and bed actually feel conducive to live and sleep on.
Work Smart By Organizing Your Room
Organizing a residence hall room can be tricky, especially when sharing it with your roommates. You can start by setting limitations and ground rules. Be honest with each other. Have a routine or schedule as to who’s assigned for cleaning on certain days. This step is very important so that you can keep a clean and livable room.
To help you out, here are some failproof tips to keep a dorm room organized:
- Set up a specific workspace.
It can be tempting to study and work anywhere in your room, but this will only limit your ability to focus. Most rooms will be equipped with a study desk. So, use that space wisely.
When you designate a specific workspace, it can also control your mess. If you have books you want to come back to later after going out, you can simply keep them neat on your table rather than leave them on the floor.
- Take advantage of any vertical space you have.
While you won’t be allowed to make any permanent changes to your room, this doesn’t mean you won’t have room for temporary storage solutions.
If you’re feeling short on space, you can always use vertical space. Storage solutions like easy-to-remove hanging shelves can do just the trick.
- Keep your own laundry hamper.
Doing your laundry everyday may be ideal, but it’s not always doable. Often, you’ll have to learn to make do with a weekly laundry schedule. With that, having your own laundry hamper is always a must-have.
Don’t just leave your dirty laundry in one corner of the room, piled up like a mountain, waiting to be washed. This is as unsanitary as it is unpleasant. Keeping a laundry hamper can keep them contained – and out of sight.
Final Thoughts
College is an exciting time in every student’s life. With the big transition from high school, the feeling of fear and anxiety will be there. There’s a lot of work to be done, and any mistake will make or break your future employment. Then, it’s also that period of adjustment where now you have to do things by yourself while living in your own space – in this case, your room in a residential hall.
Although a smooth transition is not guaranteed for everyone, mentally preparing yourself is always a good start. And if you are still feeling the jitters, you can always go back to this guide.
