Making the transition from home life to dorm life can be a real shell-shock, especially if you’re living out of state and can’t visit home. There are a lot of things that you’ll have to get used to pretty quickly. So prepare yourself; here are 15 things you’ll definitely miss from home once you start living in a dorm.
I think this one is probably the most popular, and obviously a given. The food at the campus cafeteria can just never compare to the dinner and freshly baked desserts that your family did so well. Eat all the cookies and lasagna you can, you won’t have them again for a while.
Most dorms don’t allow you to have candles because of the fire hazard they pose. There just isn’t a good substitute to candles out there. Incense doesn’t cut it, and those gel things (you all know what I’m talking about) don’t last longer than a day.
Yes, whether or not you realize it, doing laundry for free is actually a privilege! The washing machines and dryers on most college campuses will run you about $2.50 per week, which really adds up if you like to do your laundry once a week.
That’s right: pets. Unless you have an illness or disability for which you’re legally allowed to have a service animal with you at all times, animals are a no-go in dorms. There is once consolation, though. You can have some fish! Little bubbles just doesn’t bring as much joy, though. After all, he’s confined to a small tank… sigh
Unless you just come across some incredible stroke of luck, you’re probably going to have to share a bathroom with several people, if not an entire floor of people. Having all the privacy you could ask for at home is a blessing, but having it stripped away feels like a curse.
By this time, you and your bed at home are pretty much best friends. It knows every curve of your body and you find yourself only ever wanting to be there. Dorm room beds, however, leave a lot to be desired. For starters, they’re probably a lot smaller than you’re used to. Unless you get a thick mattress topper, you can feel every spring prodding into you as you try to drift off to sleep.
It’s college, so peace and quiet is pretty much a commodity now. There’ll be frat parties outside your dorm hall, parties right next door, and there’ll be just really loud talkers… It is inevitable. You thought your parents could be obnoxious? Just wait. Get ready for some noise when living in a dorm!
At home, there was always a spot for you to park no matter what. You’d pull in and walk inside your home and not even think about how nice that is. At college, parking is terrible. You may get lucky and find a parking spot right next to your dorm one day, and another day you might have to park half a mile away in the dark. It can get frustrating, so relish your driveway at home while you can.
You’re living at home with your parents, watching T.V., chatting, and reading on the daily. The biggest pressure you had at home was probably your mother making you do your chores. All of a sudden you move into a dorm and there are a million things going on at once. There are so many student organizations you can’t even keep track, there are events going on seemingly every hour, and you feel the pressure to delve into the college experience by trying to do it all.
Chances are, your parents did most of the heavy cleaning at home. Once you move into a dorm though, all that responsibility falls upon you and you alone. Vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing, every little thing that must be cleaned has to be cleaned by you. You’ll be thanking your parents for all the hard work they put into keeping the house spotless.
You can’t have open heating elements when living in a dorm for the same reason you can’t have candles. This greatly limits your cooking options to things from the microwave or things that you don’t need to cook at all. It’s surprisingly sad.
You probably had a lot of closet space at home. If not, then there was a spare room or garage where you could stuff all your extra things. When living in a dorm, storage space is incredibly limited. Bring only what is absolutely necessary.
You’ll find yourself longing for that last summer before you went to college. You had just graduated from high school and you were on a freedom high. Now, every summer will be spent either worrying about the next semester (because now you know how hard it is) or taking summer classes.
You can’t paint your dorm room and any kind of decorating is limited to what you can put up with a command strip. At home, you could do literally whatever you wanted to your room as long as it fits within a certain budget. A lot of you creative freedom is taken away with dorm life.
Suffice to say, the thing you’ll miss most when living in a dorm is your family: seeing them every day, giving them a hug, telling them in-person how your day was and talking to them about theirs. Homesickness and missing your family is one of the worst parts of the transition to dorm life. You’ll have a night or two of crying from missing them, but that’s totally normal. Just call them at every opportunity to soften the blow.
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