<p>What things can I do to help prepare myself for living on campus? (residence hall, for ex.)</p>
<p>I didn’t prepare myself for living in the residence halls, so I wouldn’t know how to properly answer that question. Um, get used to living in a noisy environment if you’re coming from a relatively quiet environment, I guess? In the residence halls, you’ll hear people partying in the next room over or even in the room one floor above you until 3am in the morning, even with quiet hours enforced, so you’ll have to get used to that (if you’re anything like me, if you’re really, really tired, you can sleep through anything, even if someone drives a bulldozer into your room and makes a complete mess). Also, if you’re not one of the lucky ones who got a single, be prepared to having a roommate, who can either be awesome or a complete nightmare from the get-go.</p>
<p>Preparation is more things to remember than anything.</p>
<p>It’s common for there to be communal bathrooms. Flip-flops are important, as is a robe/cover-up (towel may work) that covers all the important stuff.</p>
<p>Talk with your roommate about class schedules, bedtimes, overnight guests, food in the room, what’s shared/what isn’t, when to lock the door, and stuff about furniture placement/usage.</p>
<p>There may be quiet hours, which isn’t a big deal at my school. But there’s always the one room that blasts their music (as in, I felt and heard it from the floor above with no windows open). There’s also times when there’s 24-hour quiet hours in my school’s dorms (during exam week), and you have to be almost silent, or you get fined.</p>
<p>Try to underpack within reason. Don’t leave behind a bunch of stuff just so you can fit everything, but like others have said on this forum, if it won’t all fit into an SUV, it won’t fit into a dorm room. For me, I fit almost all my stuff for (my clarinets and laptop excepted) into a Nissan Versa, which isn’t the biggest car in the world by any stretch.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>You can’t really prepare for this sort of life. It’s different from pretty much anything you’ll have ever experienced. </p>
<p>All you can do, really, is to think of what you want to get out of living on-campus. For me, it was to define myself. I’ve always been the quiet, timid one because my parents expected me to be the one to uphold the family reputation, so I wasn’t allowed out very often, and they always had one eye on me, making sure I didn’t do anything that could possibly be interpreted wrong. I’ve been nothing but my parents’ daughter my entire life, and I hated it. So when I came here, I was determined to find out who I was at long last, to go out more, to talk more, and to not worry about my parents. Coming with a goal helped, and it made making friends a little easier.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t think getting a single is all it’s cracked up to be. The one person in my hall with a single is always in her room and doesn’t come out much, so she misses out on a lot of the fun we have as a hall. And there’s a hall in our complex that is almost all singles, and one of the residents from there sleeps over in our hall a lot because he can’t stand a single. My roommate goes home on the weekends, so it’s nice to have a few days when the room is mine, but I really like that I have a roommate to talk to, who also lets me know when stuff is going on, and who helped me to meet my first friends in the hall.</p>
<p>If you have any specific questions, message me and I’d be happy to help.</p>