Weblog
I am a senior in college, and I am living in the dorms. There are schools in which this is quite a common occurrence (smaller institutions; e.g. Harvard, I’m told), but at Cornell, most students have abandoned on-campus housing by the time their junior year rolls around. For reasons I’ve not really taken the time to investigate, rich parachute kids from Taiwan and Korea are almost guaranteed to be living in luxury apartments right out of their freshman year. My immediate intuition is that they don’t like to socialize with us Americans or that communal living doesn’t fit with their notion of the household, but that’s kind of racist, so pretend I didn’t say that.
Even though I did.
Relatively Old
As if it weren’t already demeaning enough to be one of the only seniors on my floor, the vast majority of my floormates aren’t even juniors; they’re sophomores. Don’t get me wrong; I never looked down upon members of a younger class or subscribed to any of that seniority nonsense. It’s just that living within such close quarters of people two years younger than I turns that empowering sense of savoir-faire into a lame feeling of mal à propos.
It also reminds me of how all my life I’ve been a late bloomer.
No Regrets
That said, I still don’t regret living in the dorms. College only comes around once in a lifetime, and I’d like to take this opportunity to live in a place where I can prop my door open and offer myself to encounters with random passersby (worst plural noun ever) and sex offenders (bring it; I’ll fuck you up). Granted, the off-campus option can definitely be cheaper in some cases, but at the same time, I’d rather not do my own housekeeping when I’ve got both an academic and extracurricular life to attend to. Besides, I feel closer and more connected to my alma mater living in a residence hall.