Living on campus might foster friendships, but it can also confine students in cramped living quarters which can feel suffocating. With so much talk lately about the initiative that would require Ohio State sophomores to live on campus, I would like to offer my personal reason for wanting to live off campus next year: space.
I am a freshman living in Lincoln tower. Lincoln is suite-style, which means I share a common room and bathroom with nine other girls, and, being one of the lucky ones in the quad, I share a bedroom and study room with three other girls. This means the same amount of space that the rest of my suite-mates share with only one other girl, I share with three.
Girls have a lot of stuff. My closet always spills over to my bed. My desk chair is covered in four or five coats, because my closet leaves no room to hang them up. My desk is overflowing with food, pens, books, homework, dishes and other “necessities.” The amount of clutter in my quarter of the study room and bedroom would make Martha Stewart’s heart break.
Aside from the fact that I can rarely find a place to store all of my stuff, there’s also rarely a place for me. Living in a quad means two rooms for four people, and if everyone’s home, that means you’d be lucky to have a room to yourself. I long for the chance to go to my own room, shut the door and have the freedom to talk on the phone, watch a movie or even change my clothes without worrying that I’m disturbing someone.
I know space is just one issue when it comes to deciding where to live in college, but I think it is an important one. Having no personal space takes a toll on a person, especially a person sleeping in a twin-sized bed in cramped living quarters. When the only place to be alone is a shower that I actually still have to share with other girls’ hair clogging the drain, I can’t wait to leave the dorm life behind.
I often dream of August: when I will share three floors and nine rooms with three friends I’ve made here, rather than the claustrophobic situation I live in now. And I feel bad for the sophomores of the future who might not be given the choice I had that allows me to do that.
