A few weeks ago, I talked about traditional dorm-style housing options on campus. However, as I mentioned, those are not the only type of housing available in college. This week I’ll explore the pros and cons of on-campus apartments.
After the traditional dorm-style rooms that I had my freshman year, I lived in the Spring Garden Apartments. This time, instead of the mixed feelings I had towards the traditional-style dorms, I was feeling a whole lot more confident about these on-campus apartments!
Traditional-style was fun for the first year but for sophomore year, with slightly more demanding classes, a change of scenery was necessary. And the Spring Garden Apartments definitely hit the spot! With your own personal rooms, full-size bed, dresser, closet, and desk space, each person has a place to get away from all the hubbub of college for a little R&R whenever necessary.
With your own personal kitchen as well, family meals with your roommates would allow for some good bonding time! And a full size fridge all to yourselves means you can stock up on groceries and not have treck all the way over to the Caf for food (which can actually be a con: the fact that the apartments aren’t central to campus, and are actually on the outskirts instead). Every once in awhile you just need a nice, home-cooked meal!
Bathroom-wise, now you only have to share with one other person and you guys can keep a cleaning schedule so you never have to deal with the horrendous mess that was the traditional-dorm-style communal bathrooms ever again! There’s also a small but effective living room area where everyone can snuggle up and watch movies together on Friday nights!
Now, even though all of that sounds great, you also have to consider the cons of living in any on-campus apartment-style housing, especially the Spring Garden Apartments, and that would be the cost of living there. At over $3,000 a semester, living in the luxury of these on-campus apartments can get a little pricey, something that you have to genuinely consider when looking at your housing options for the next school year. It’s easy to go ahead and choose the more expensive option when the money is coming out of loans and not your pocket, but just remember that someday, much sooner than you think, that money plus interest will be coming out of your own hard-earned money.
Besides that, if you do want to live in apartment-style housing, you have to have 3 other people that would want to live there with you, or face the potential disaster of random roommates (which I’ve seen go horribly wrong before). Now, don’t get me wrong, randoms could most definitely work out, but when you’re taking a chance on all three randoms being a good fit for you, that may be pushing your luck a little bit too much. If you’re in a situation where you can’t find 3 roommates, I would suggest finding at least one person you know to make the situation a bit better.
One of the only facility issues that I experienced during my time at the Spring Garden Apartments was the trash room conundrum. Unlike North Spencer, where designated trash people came by occasionally to take the trash from your room, in the apartments, people are expected to be a little bit more responsible, and for good reason! We’re in college, people! The issue in the apartments was, on each floor there’s a small room with a trash shoot in it and on certain days, the shoot would be closed and instead of residents taking trash down to the dumpsters, as they were asked to, they would leave their bags of trash sitting on the floor in the tiny-closet trash room, which would pile up and then proceed to stink up the entire hall. Besides that though, the building structure of the Spring Garden Apartments was exquisite! This may not be an issue with all on-campus apartments, but it is definitely something to consider.
Lastly, for us car owners out there, it can be quite convenient time-wise that there’s a parking lot right underneath the apartments. Price-wise, though, you many want to think twice about that. Personally I would like to not spend almost half a thousand dollars on a parking pass. And if you don’t either, that means you’re gonna have to spend over $300 on a B-lot pass and then have to walk an awkwardly long distance around the building to get into the apartment. Let’s just say that each grocery trip is gonna be an arm workout.
Overall though, the Spring Garden Apartment’s pros do outweigh the cons if you’re willing to pay for it. They are nicely built, newly built, and convenient if you want to stay on campus but also be a little bit more independent and have a little bit more space. Personally though, after one year there, I was ready to move off-campus and spend a significant amount less on housing. Stay tuned to hear the pro’s and con’s of living off-campus in the coming weeks!