I have lived both off campus and on campus. I can see the benefits and drawbacks of both.
In my mind, the benefits of living on campus are overwhelming. I have spent the majority of my seven years, which includes two years of graduate school, living on campus.
There is no greater feeling than that of making it to an exam on time after waking up 10 minutes before. Not having to drive to campus and look for a place to park every day is my favorite reason for living on campus.
I missed more than one class when I lived in town because I woke up too late to get to campus. Of course, I am in the habit of hitting the snooze button, which may not be a problem for some people.
As long as we are on the subject of snoozing, let’s talk about naps between classes.
At some point or another we have all had that odd one hour break after an 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. class. Some people choose to eat breakfast then or go to the library.
I prefer to sleep. So, I take five minutes to cruise back to my residence hall. I have 45 minutes to snooze until I head back to my next class.
Maybe you are less concerned with sleeping. So what about something else?
Roommates. There is nothing worse than a person who eats your food, makes a mess of the bathroom, hogs the television and then has the guts to ask you to hold their check for this month’s rent until his tax return.
After you have enough problems with roommates, you either keep searching for the right one, or you live alone and go broke.
This can happen on campus, too. The difference is, living alone on campus is a lot less painful to the wallet than it is off campus.
Speaking of pain in the wallets, what about bills? Bills are horrible. Electricity, cable, water, garbage, “maintenance,” etc.
It always seemed like the bills arrived the day before my paycheck did.
On campus, they bill your account and it is up to you when and how you want to pay it off. No bills, just your rent.
I know some of the on-campus apartments do have monthly billing and Aiken Village residents have an electric bill, but residence halls do not.
Living on campus has another great feature-or bad side effect-depending on your view of it: resident assistants and residence directors. People who live right there in the building with you.
They suffer, too, when the hot water or the power goes out. They are just as determined to get it turned back on as you are.
There is no need to call an owner who lives somewhere else to figure out what the problem is. Maintenance is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I know people have told me many reasons why they choose to move off campus. All too often I see them creating more problems by running from the ones they already have.
For instance, a friend of mine said residence halls were too noisy for him, so he moved off campus to a medium-sized apartment complex.
There he decided it was still too loud and moved to a trailer a few miles outside of town.
Now he misses classes on a regular basis because he doesn’t feel like driving “all the way to campus” just for an hour.
Often when we choose where we live, we only focus on the problems that we currently have and not the problems or challenges we will have where we want to live.
Many of us have known people that have moved in together off campus and then found that they either didn’t like the person, the relationship ended or that they just couldn’t live together.
Then they were stuck for a year. On campus, they could have just looked for a room change.
I encourage everyone who is thinking about moving off campus to ask themselves why they want to do it-and be honest with themselves.
If it is so you can have friends of the opposite sex spend the night, so you can drink beer, or just because you think it would be “soooo cool,” then weigh it against the problems you are creating.
John Summerlot is a graduate student in counselor education. He can be reached at [email protected].