One thing that worried me the most about coming to college was the living arrangements. Your dorm is your home for eight months and having a good dorm home is a crucial aspect to freshman year. Here are some tips and tricks to help you survive.
1. Bring lots of lighting
The lights provided in many dorms don’t provide much, when and if they do work, and it’s very difficult to study and live in a dark dorm room. When your room has plenty of light, your whole living situation will feel much better.
·2. Don’t bring too much
When you are packing your life away to move to school you may be afraid of not having something or as the year goes on you may bring more and more things from home. Either way you have to remember that come May YOU are the one moving everything out. Make sure your stuff fits in one vehicle at the end of the year. Tip: Once second semester begins, determine things that you don’t use and as the semester goes you can start to take things back home.
3. Make friends with your floor mates and residence hall mates
Most likely, you will spend a lot of time in your room and in your building so it is important to make friends with the people who live around you. It’s always nice to see a friendly face and smile as you pass each other in the halls. The people in your building will also be your biggest resources. Need a vacuum? There’s a chance someone has one!
4. Bring air freshener and sanitizing wipes
SMELLLS will LINGER in your tiny rooms. One smelly dinner reheated in the microwave and your room smells for a week. Things like air freshener will change your life. Sanitizing wipes will be a big help to avoid the germs that float around as well.
5. Pack slippers and flip flops
Since you are not at home, walking around in your socks or bare feet may cause you to squirm a little. In the summer, flip-flops are the best things to walk around in and super easy to throw on. When it’s 2am and you are walking through the dorms to get a pizza, slippers are a must.
6. Keep a roll of Toilet paper handy
The scariest place in the dorms has to be the bathroom. With so many people sharing a bathroom, it is not always going to be clean or well stocked. The worst thing that happens is when you realize, a moment too late, that there is no toilet paper. Keeping a roll in your room may save your butt.
7. Pack an Ethernet cord
Colleges and universities have a LOT of people using the internet, and for this reason it may not be the most reliable Wi-Fi. When you have a paper due at midnight, and the Wi-Fi doesn’t work, Ethernet cables will ensure your assignment gets turned in.
8. Have things that make you feel at home
In such a new environment, having things like pictures or certain decorations will make you feel at home. You don’t have to forget about everything back home jut because you are away at school.
9. Have a cover for your toothbrush
One of the most tragic times is when you drop your toothbrush on the floor. Have no fear! Toothbrush covers are the GREATEST inventions. We never know what is floating around in the air, or when something might touch our toothbrush, so a cover will save you from buying new brushes.
10. Good headphones will be your BEST friend
Maybe the people above you are jumping around in their room or the library is extremely loud; good headphones will be your BEST FRIEND! If you are someone who has a hard time focusing, headphones that block out noise will change your life.