Category Archives: Academia

Dorm Problems

I’m glad to be back at college, and there are so many annoying things I have to deal with it home, but there are also so many annoying things to deal with here. I mean just ridiculous, this-is-why-I-can’t-stand-people kind of things. So let me tell you about my wonderful living arrangements.

EDIT: I probably should have explained my living arrangements first-hand. I am in a “suite” where I have a roommate (who is wonderful and keeps me sane) and then we share a bathroom with two other girls, called our suitemates. They are, uhm, well, you’ll see, haha.

My suitemates eat toilet paper.
Okay not really, but they consume mass amounts of toilet paper in really small amounts of time. In two weeks, we used thirteen rolls for four people. Which is ridiculous! And which I wouldn’t mind so much except that toilet paper costs money, which means I have to spend more money because they don’t know how to use moderate amounts. I also don’t have an infinite amount of money, and I’m pretty cheap, so I like to save my money in any way possible. After one week here and seven rolls of toilet paper later, my and Alysha talked to our suitemates and agreed that we would no longer share toilet paper. I can already feel the money being saved!

My suitemates don’t clean. Ever.
At the beginning of the year, we agreed that one of the four of us would clean our shared bathroom every weekend, because if you’re not aware how gross a bathroom gets in one week alone when four girls are sharing it, let me tell you: it gets disgusting. I have never seen either one of them touch the crate of cleaning supplies we have in our bathroom. So I have to clean up their nastiness for them. Which is both disgusting and rather infuriating after the fiftieth time. I like to not live in filth, thank you very much. Also, they still haven’t cleaned their room since the beginning of the school year. There are clumps of hair and dirt on their floor and it makes me want to vomit.

My suitemates talk really loud on Skype.
It’ll be two in the morning, and when I finally convince myself to stop watching TV shows on Hulu and to go to bed, one of my suitemates will get on Skype. EXCEPT FOR SOME REASON SHE THINKS SHE HAS TO SHOUT FOR THEM TO HEAR HER. It reminds me of when my mom got her first cellphone, and she would shout really loud in restaurants so people on the other line could hear her (or so she thought) and we’d all duck our heads in embarrassment as people just stared. You don’t have to shout for people to hear you on your phone, or on Skype.

My suitemates’ perfume smells like death.
Sometimes I’ll come back from class around noon, and one of them will just have showered and left the bathroom door open, so that my room is not only as humid as a tropical rainforest, but it also smells like an old lady’s perfume on a decaying body. In otherwords, like death. It might be two degrees Fahrenheit outside, but the window is being opened, because I can’t breathe.

My neighbors like to blast music at 7:45 AM on Saturdays.
I think most normal college students like to sleep in on Saturdays because it’s generally the only time that we have to actually sleep in and be lazy. Oh, never mind, that’s really just asking too much since our neighbors like to blast annoying pop music as loud as they can. Normally they blast it for about five minutes, then shut it off, as if they’re just trying to annoy people but then realize they’re being douches. But last Saturday, they blasted it for forty-five minutes. I got my iPod to try and drown it out with music that I actually enjoyed, but the bass was reverberating through my bed, so that was rather useless. Next time I’m pounding on their door and telling them to shut up. OR ELSE.

Conservatory students feel obligated to sing. All the time.
The floor that I am on is made up entirely of students in the conservatory, meaning they’re studying music or theater. For some reason unbeknownst to either me or my roommate, since we’re both business majors, we’re stuck on that floor too. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s not too bad since they’re all pretty nice except for one fact: they sing at the top of their lungs, all the time and anytime.

People above us throw each other onto the floor at midnight.
I really don’t know how else to explain it, but they’re doing something up there, maybe dropping bowling balls? Doing some intense workout? But never failing, every night the noise starts up. My precious sleep…. D:

Ghetto people in the courtyard don’t ever shut up.
My room is located right on the courtyard of the dorm and there are plenty of ghetto people who don’t know how to speak in a normal tone of voice, so that, through my window and three stories up, I can hear every word they are shrieking, perfectly clear. I should start entering their conversations and shouting back, bahaha.

It’s friggin’ expensive.
To stay in the dorm for a full year, it comes out to around $10,000, including a meal plan. If I get at least one roommate, and pay around $400 a month for rent, utilities, and food, I can stay in an apartment for $4,800, which is less than half the price I’m paying for this crappy dorm. (Okay, the dorm itself isn’t of a crappy quality – it’s actually fairly nice for a college dorm. It’s mainly just the people I’m surrounded by that drive me insane. Except my roommate – can’t tell you enough how thankful I am for her.)

Moral of my story: I can’t wait to move out next year into my own apartment.

I like copying papers and shredding them

I feel a pattern that the beginning of semesters are going to be a bit rough for me. I’m a worry-wart, so all of these new classes and schedules and obligations tends to send my mind spinning and I just simply freak out. However, now that week one is behind me, I’m feeling less apprehensive about this semester and at least trying to take it one day at a time.

At least I’m not crying over how much I miss home like last semester. (Though I miss my dog, Tabor, terribly. :()

I started my new job on Wednesday. I’m not really sure what my official title is – I think it’s along the lines of Clerical Student Assistant. I have work-study with my university and work in the Psychology Department. From what I got from my first day of training, I basically do whatever they want me to do. I received a thick handbook about what my job would entail. After the first day, I honestly couldn’t tell you what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know, which was slightly scary and at the same time funny. The whole being in a new environment and not knowing what the crap is going on or who any of these people are really freaks me out. So after I was done with work on Wednesday, I just worried all day Thursday about how work on Friday would go. :/

Like always though, I seem to worry about really irrelevant things. It turns out, I actually had fun this morning at work. I got to scan a lot of papers, shred them, and today I placed an order for supplies. I got to go through and find the items on the website, so I was just pretending I was buying all these office supplies for myself because I like shopping for new school supplies. :P Then I did more “actual work” and worked on some Excel spreadsheets, but it was just overall a good day. Plus, I get my own email, which may seem insignificant, but it definitely makes me feel like an integral part of the office. :)

My supervisor seems very nice. She’s an older lady, and she’s very sweet, if not rather particular about how things are done. I’m not going to lie, I’ve always wanted to work in an office, even if I was just doing bottom-of-the-totem-pole kind of work. I always thought working with a copy machine and running errands would be fun. :P Is that weird? I think I’ll like working in an office-type environment.

At least I hope so. I would prefer not to hate my job.

I originally had some problems with my hours and this stupid Theatre Appreciation class I have to take. Basically the course was overlapping with the hours I was supposed to work. I thought it would’ve worked out fine, I just would’ve been a few minutes late to class on Fridays. I emailed the instructor to notify him and he responded rather douche-ly. I don’t think he intended to reply so rudely, but it definitely came across since he lectured me about how I shouldn’t enroll in classes I can’t attend on time. Well, pardon me. I didn’t assign myself the hours I’m working! Then he told me I would probably fail the class if I was up to five minutes late on Fridays, which I think is a little dramatic (heh, he is a theatre instructor…). But anyhow, I just had to shorten my hours some, which I suppose is okay, but it took an hour off of how much I originally worked, and while I might think I like doing this office stuff, I’m still there for the money.

Which, by the way, my pay is awesome, at least for the kind of job I have. I make $10.50 an hour, which is such a relief since I am a.) a college student and b.) kind of broke. I’ve been saving for a car, and next semester I’m moving into an apartment. I can just see the bills stacking up before my eyes. x_x I have a fixed schedule which is also nice: I work Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:15 PM to 5:00 PM and then Fridays 8:00 AM to 10:45 AM. The Fridays kind of suck because I have to get up pretty early and it’s a short shift (stupid theatre class), and the Mondays and Wednesdays because I don’t have time for lunch between my class and work. I’ll just have to pack a sandwich to go, which I’m sure I’ll get sick of pretty fast.

At the end of my shift this morning, my ankle was really hurting so I assumed I had a blister from my flats. I got to my class and Andrew was complaining about something, so I pulled up my pants to show him my blister and was startled to find my ankle covered in blood. My flats were literally just slowly chipping at the layers of my skin. It was disgusting. I had to sit through class with it bleeding and walk across campus back to my dorm before I could clean it and take my shoes off. I’d post a picture, but I think if I stared at it too long I’d get queasy…

It hurt pretty bad once I started paying attention to it. I soaked my pants and tried to get as much blood of my shoes as I could when I got back. I’m not too worried since it’s just on the inside of the flats so it’s not noticeable. However, now I have to find some different shoes that don’t destroy my feet!