I know that mostly everyone in their right mind would say that living in the dorms at any college, not just ETSU specifically, is a bad decision and that no one should attempt to live in such close quarters with one other person. This is understandable: people fight and steal each other’s stuff. I’ve even heard of some pretty repulsive things roommates have done to get back at the other one involving toothbrushes.
However, sometimes the dorm experience turns out to be an interesting one. It can bring you closer to not only your roommate but to those living near you as well.
I’m from Knoxville, so when I moved to Johnson City to go to ETSU, I was extremely ready to move two hours away. However, I had heard things from my friends at UT about how living in the dorms was an awful situation and how they ended up despising their roommate by the end of the year. All of these things made me feel very nervous about living on campus, especially since my roommate was one of the only people I knew in Johnson City. If we started disliking one another, I’d basically have no friends.
The weeks went by, and to tell you the truth, I absolutely love my roommate. Sure, we were friends before we moved here, but many people say that if you’re friends before living together, you probably won’t be friends after. This statement proves false in my situation. Living in the dorm with my roommate has definitely brought us closer together and I couldn’t imagine living somewhere without her.
Not only did residing in the dorms bring me closer to my roommate, it definitely helped me meet people when I first got here. Some of my closest friends live in the same dorm and I can just go knock on their door and talk about anything, at any time of night. It’s a very comforting feeling to know that you always have someone to talk to, no matter what. It also helps that most of my friends that live near me are in my sorority and that they are there for me even if they have tons of homework and it’s after midnight.
Of course, there are the occasional loud neighbors, who like to scream in unison at odd hours of the night. Those same neighbors, incidentally, have friends who bang so hard on their door you’d think they were trying to knock the whole door down (these walls are paper-thin).
There’s even the occasional drunken kid wandering around the hallway at 3 a.m. looking for the friend he accidentally lost. However, these moments only make living in the dorms more interesting and keep me very entertained.
One room and two people just seems crowded, right? Well, to tell you the truth there are moments when I want my own space. But they don’t seem to overpower all of the moments when I want to talk to my roommate and have her right there whenever I need to say something completely random . or when I just need a study buddy. I think that everyone should live in the dorms at least for a year, because if you don’t I think you’re missing out. Sure, living off-campus would prevent you from experiencing those random fire-drills, that loud next-door neighbor and those friendly visits from your RA.
However, you’d also be missing out on having so many awesome people live right next to you and all of the craziness that goes along with it. At times, it seems like I could never do this again, but then I know I’ll look back on this year and be glad that I lived on-campus because some of the best times I’ve had happened here and I wouldn’t take it back for anything.

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