Since the first day I moved into my small freshman dorm last year, I have anxiously waited for the day I live in an apartment off-campus. Knowing I would someday have my own bedroom and bathroom to get ready for class in gave me hope each time I silently got dressed as to not wake up my roommate. As of today, I finally live in a great apartment with three of my best friends, and I’m usually very happy about it. However, as the weeks go by and the school year progresses, I slowly find more reasons why I hate living off-campus. Despite how small my dorm on campus last year was, I find myself walking past the building on my way to class and missing living there. Here are 10 reasons why I hate living off-campus.
- Far From Class
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Last year, I lived a one minute walk away from the central hub of campus. Now, I live a 15 minute drive away—without traffic. I don’t have a car, so my way of getting to school is through the local city transit. If I ever missed the bus, I could never just walk to campus—I’d have to beg a friend to drive me to class or pay for a taxi service
- Unreliable Bus System
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I don’t want to hate on the city transit, since it allows me to get to class, but it truly does not follow its online schedule. Without the live bus tracker capability that I have on my phone, I would miss the bus every day. The bus could arrive anywhere between 20 minutes earlier or 30 minutes after the schedule online says it will arrive. And though very rarely, the bus simply never shows up.
- Unknown Location
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Since there are countless apartments off campus that students can live in, I find it rare that people I talk to know where my apartment complex is. I’ve never been great at knowing street names and describing a location, so if someone doesn’t already know where I live, it’s hard for me to explain it unless I pull it up on a map. When every freshman lived in one of the buildings set aside for freshman to live in, it was much easier to picture where a person lived.
- Stuck on Campus
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Since the apartment is so far away and traffic is unpredictable, once I’m on campus for class, I’m stuck there until all my classes are over. No more going home to use the bathroom and take a nap—if I want to relax, I must do so in a crowded building until my next class starts.
- Full Backpack
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Since I’m stuck on campus all day, I have to bring my notebooks and necessary textbooks for each class that day, plus, my laptop, various chargers, a packed lunch, and snacks. I’m a small girl so whenever my backpack is full I look like a turtle!
- Less Involvement
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When I lived on campus, I could hypothetically join any club and as many clubs as I wanted since I could just walk to the meetings on campus. But now, I struggle with being in just one club that meets once a week since I don’t have a car and the city transit stops running by the time I would get out of my meeting. If I had a car I’m sure this would be less of a problem, but I would still have to drive myself to each meeting and drive myself home—that’s a lot of gas.
- Non-student Neighbors
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This isn’t necessarily a problem for every off-campus apartment since most are geared towards students, but there’s always a possibility that your neighbors or simply other people in the complex don’t go to the same school as you. At least in the freshman dorm you were guaranteed that each student was your age and went to your school—it was easier to make friends.
- Friendly or Solicitor?
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Since this is an apartment and not a dorm, any stranger could knock on your door to sell you products or solicit other information. If I wanted to meet the people who lived around me, I would have to knock on their door and hope that they don’t think I’m trying to sell them something. In a freshman dorm, there was higher protection so anyone who knocks on your door would either be a student or a resident assistance.
- Stuck in My Apartment
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As I’m writing this, all three of my roommates are home for the weekend. They all have cars, which means that if I needed a ride, I wouldn’t be able to get one until they got home. This isn’t too much of a problem over the weekend since I have no weekend meetings or a job, but if I needed food from the store or a ride to the hospital, I’m trapped inside…unless I call a taxi service but that’s so much work on my part.
- Cook for Myself
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Since I live so far from campus, I decided not to get a meal plan since I’m only close to the dining halls for a few hours during the week. This means that I have to buy my own food and prepare it myself. Cooking will get easier as I get older, but for now, I’m unskilled and too lazy to make anything fancy. However, home-cooked meals will always beat dining hall food.
Living away from campus is just preparation for the real world. But for now, I’ll continue complaining about it.