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When we are little, we are laden with restrictions placed upon us by our superiors. For example, I wasn’t allowed to eat candy until I was sixteen (you read that right; someone did that to a child). While I blame a lot of my neurosis on that little rule, the real thing that’s been bothering me lately are the restrictions we must place upon ourselves.
When you enter college you make a multitude of little concessions. At first these seem like fair trades: “Sure, I’ll shower in shoes as long as I don’t have to cook.” Or even more popular, “I will eat all the french fries in the world as long as they’re made of sweet freedom.”
But living in the university bubble comes with a price and the freshmen fifteen is far from being the worst of it. Now a senior and living back on campus, I have begun to reflect on these experiences.
At first, the shiny new prospects blind you from seeing the reality. Living on your own, surrounded by fascinating strangers, appears all so thrilling on the surface. You walk to class, you get your own food, you stay up however late you like, making a reasonable amount of noise and no disgruntled daddy is going to knock on your door and tell you that you have school tomorrow — or so you think.
Walking around campus becomes a bit more difficult during the months in which it is reduced to a frozen tundra of nightmares. Your car, if brought with you, will be buried for three months like a perfectly preserved wooly mammoth. All of those cute school outfits that caught the eye of that guy/girl in your math class will be covered in layer upon layer of your finest grandma garb and those seemingly free french fries start to insulate you against the cold, which seems again, like a good idea at first.
However, when the layers start peeling off come spring, what you might find is that your svelte physique has disappeared and instead you’re unwrapping a fleece-covered loaf of raw bread dough.
You can in fact stay up as late as you like. But will you want to? Maybe, or maybe not, once you realize your late hours aren’t attributed to anything very fun. Did you stay up until four in the morning making a crazy amount of noise? Yes, but this was because you had more homework than it is feasible to complete in a twelve-hour day and the noises were just your whimpers as you held yourself, realizing ‘gen. eds’ have a license to kill.
The fascinating strangers aspect, while most appealing, can perhaps be the most dangerous. Your roommate, whom at first was so interesting with their strange taste in music and affinity for funky clothing, has revealed him or herself to be a taxidermist complete who has fashioned a display case for all of their hard work.
Well into the school year at this point, these problems are just beginning to wave at you from your window as you saunter happily to a class, that no doubt, still interests you. As we become upperclassmen however, these things become less of a ‘fair trade’ and more of a full fight.
The great move off campus comes inevitably, also inevitably followed by the great Ramen noodle diet of 2009. Sure, creepy landlords, impossibly high rent and mildly ghetto surroundings are all worth it to wiggle your bare toes against a tile floor — or so you have told yourself while making your latest concession.
I once had a landlord who would sneak about my apartment while I was in the bathroom. As I packed my bags and got the hell out of Dodge, I couldn’t help but think fondly of the cramped dorm room I had unceremoniously scoffed at years earlier.
Bangor Daily News