Hey Guys,
I'm in the middle of the exams right now so the end of my first year in college is coming soon. My last exam is on the 16th of june and than the schoolyear is officially over.
In this series of posts I wanted to talk to you about my experience, it may help you or give you an idea of how life in college is. I do want to remind you guys that I'm not living in America but I live in Europe, so the experience in America might be totally different. I hope that I can help some of you and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Let's start with the first topic.
1. Living in a dormroom.
Fortunately I didn't have to share my dorm and I was able to go back home every weekend. In the beginning everything might seem a bit scary, living on your own, making your own food etc. But you get used to it quite quickly. I think it's very important to make your dorm your own personal space where you feel comftable in. the first semester my room was kind of boring, but the second semester I put some pictures up and decorated it more, this will make you much happier and feel more at home.
I also highly recommend to socialize. We have to cook and eat in one room and that's the perfect way to make new friends. It's just awesome after a long day of school to come 'home' and have your friends around you. They'll get you true hard times, listen to you but you'll also have the time of your life with them. So it's important to go out and don't stay in your room every night watching youtube videos or reading blogs, but enjoy your life, with the people you're surrounded by. You might have thought you would never be friends with that one girl or boy, but before you even realize you became best friends. It's very important to be open minded, and accept everyone for who they are. That way you'll make friends easily and don't feel alone all the time.
An important thing to be when you live in a dorm, is acceptable, some people might make a lot of noise when you're a sleep or when you're trying to study, but hey, when you're making a hell of a noise there might be an other person that's trying to sleep. Of course if the noise is going on and on it's always good to just go and ask if they can be a bit more silent. Mostly if you're friendly they'll do it without any problems (except when they're drunk).
(yes that's a swimming pool in the livingroom on the fifth floor!)
Let's talk some cooking shall we. To be honest I was (still am) a total disaster at cooking, not because I can't cook or because I don't like it, but because I'm way too lazy to take the time to make it AND clean everything I used. So for the first semester I made pasta every day, now I've a little more variation but not too much. I guess a good tip would be to make a list (your own cookbook)with all the things you can cook and are easy to make. maybe buy a student cookbook or something like that, but just get inspired. I definitely will make a little book with cooking ideas, that way I'll have a lot more variation next year (and be a lot healthier). Make sure you've a fridge in your dorm (this is a life saver for me), that way nobody can steal your food and if you're hungry at night you can just take something and eat it.
I haven't really gained any weight and to be honest I haven't worked out at all, so lucky me. But I would recommend to do some exercise now and then to keep healthy. If you want me to, I can do a whole post on dormroom food and recipes that are easy to cook.
The toilet and bathrooms: I've never been a fan of public toilets and yes my dormroom toilet is public, boys and girls shared and you can just hear everything that's going on next to you, in every hallway you've a room with 3 toilets (shared by 20 people). That was (still is) a huge problem for me! The whole first semester I went to a friends home to go to the toilet but now I ask friends from my dorm to sit in front of the door, and ask people to come back later if they wanted to use the toilet, that way I don't have to worry somebody will enter and sit right next to me. Some people reacted weird first off but now they're totally used to it and just come back later. We also have a room with 3 showers, again boys and girls shared. I thought the showers would be taken all the time but surprisingly enough they're always free.
To make a long story short:
You're living in a small room, with lots of people. So noise will always be there, it's never the cleanest place, and the toilets are just not really my cup of tea. But meeting new people is amazing, the friends and memories you make are amazing and I wouldn't want to change it for anything in the world!
well this was a hell of a long post, I hope it helped, and I'll definitely do some other post about other topics such as drinking, party's etc.
