Edited by: Lavanya Goswami
In the interest of continuity and literary irony, everyone likes that, right?—I’m finally making a listicle! (which I promised to never do in my last article but I’m nothing if not willing to make sacrifices for art.) Anyway, back to the listicle—which is not so much a listicle as it is an unstructured rant, mixed in with anecdotes and suggestions. It’s not the most organized (in which it is similar to my room) but it’ll have to do (it’s mid sem week guys, give me a break).
Alright, Shreya’s guide to living alone for the first time: memoirs from a person who lived their entire life in a single city, went to the same school for twelve years, never moved around, never really had to adjust to any huge changes because there weren’t any until… well, now.
I’d say, Ashoka is a fairly easy trial run, right? There’s a laundry service, there’s an app that you can use to book gym slots and maintenance and cleaning services, there are washing machines and a shop you can pop into anytime after twelve, for all your needs. It’s not really living alone, it’s like…living alone Lite. But then most of us are Adults Lite, so I’m not complaining.
One of the first things I got to know, had to do with dirt.
1) Things get dirty so fast! I swear, I’d never known the theory of entropy to be as relevant as when I started living alone, because holy crap, that single strand of hair on the floor was not there yesterday. Is my room really this dusty? and how is it physically possible for this much clutter to accumulate over the span of a single day? This is not self-critique by the way—I’m a perfectly neat person, it’s just that things just get dirty fast. Super fast. Unfairly fast. I feel that rooms (by some principle of the universe) should forbid dust from hitting the ground for at least 48 hours after an initial cleaning, but alas. Floor beckons to the dust. The earth beckons to the earth.
2) Buy the goddamn snacks. Because sometimes you’ll be stupid (or you’ll have a meeting or run into a friend or something will come up because a lot of things come up in college) and skip dinner and you’ll still be awake at 1 am with your stomach cramping into another dimension and guess what? tuck shop’s closed so now you have an empty stomach, no snacks and a worsening mood. Do yourself a favour, buy the snacks and keep them regularly stocked. It helps.
3) Can’t make a good listicle without addressing laundry. Laundry comes off as a deceptively easy thing. There’s a laundry service, you go to it regularly, voila clean clothes for a week. And then repeat. Except sometimes, you have bad weeks. You don’t go to the laundry room on time. And a whole week goes by, sometimes two and you have no clothes to wear. Sometimes laundry piles up, and you’ll have to forgive yourself for it. Although lugging your entire closet to the laundry room isn’t fun, nothing’s ruined, you’ll still get your clothes back in a few days—cleaned and pressed, transforming the bad weeks into not-so-bad weeks. I refrain from making a comparison between progress and laundry to avoid sounding pretentious but you can’t tell me it’s not a decent metaphor for it. Progress isn’t linear or defined by the times, you weren’t at your best. You can always start over.
4) Whiteboards are fun. Goofing around with markers is fun. Spilling ink, not so fun. Spilling things in general, not so fun. So, always keep a rag cloth with you, and Harpic, or some other generic, widely beloved household cleaner, because while spilling things sucks, but nothing sucks harder than stains and sticky surfaces and I’ve started to sound like an advertisement so I’ll digress. To sum up, buy some markers and play around with your whiteboard, because they really are great fun and also buy some surface cleaners because you are a college student.
5) Decorate your room!! An undecorated room is terrible for two reasons—a) It’s a one-way express train to Miseryville, and you don’t want to burn out, two weeks into the semester. Trust me b) you do want those new potential friends you’ve invited over, to know that you have a personality right? So, no matter how stupid those posters seem, print them out and stick them onto your walls. They’ll make you laugh and they’ll make you feel better when you don’t want to get out of bed and they’ll make the dull off-white walls more colourful. In fact, the more eccentric the better, add some fairy lights to the mix too. Plants are surprisingly splendid company for things that are so small and green and don’t talk.
6) Lastly, you could change everything in the world, yet nothing changes if you aren’t willing to. You could be two thousand kilometers away from home, in a new town, a new city, a new school, with new people and friends and teachers and food and everything being almost entirely different than how it was, and nothing’s really going to change unless you put yourself out there. You’re still you, wherever you go, for better or for worse. Places don’t change people unless you allow them to, and this can be both comforting and daunting, but it’s the truth. Places don’t reinvent you. You do that. You’re in charge of that. So, (and I apologise if this comes off as harsh because it’s not really meant to), if you hold the naïve notion that you’ll turn into someone else once you step foot on campus, it’s not going to happen. What will happen is that opportunities will turn up that if taken, could lead you down avenues and experiences that’ll have a lasting impact on you, but only if you take them. So, take them. Have fun, and do things that you’ve always wanted to do and make friends, (this is an important one) and don’t miss out on things because you’re scared (within reason–too much drugs are bad, kids.)
So, welcome to campus. We’re so glad to finally have you here.