The College Experience ~ Dumping Her At The Dump

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So I’ve been finally going through the photos I took at the aquarium on our California trip, and it occurs to me that I never told y’all the tale of my sister and the Dump.

 

We had gone to California to get my sister set up in college at UC Santa Cruz.  So a couple of days, including my birthday, were spent moving her into her living quarters.

 

We knew a couple of things about it already: that it was a sort of apartment with about seven kids living together, and that it was COED.  When we arrived, we quickly learned one more thing about it: the place was a Dump.

 

Now, I realize that it is tradition for kids to live in Dumps during college.  I myself lived in a residence hall at the UO for two years, and it was pretty much a Dump, as evidenced by the cockroach I caught the week before I left the first year.* But aside from the one cockroach (and the proverbial hundred you don’t see), Carson had two things going over my sister’s apartment:

 

1. Janitors

2. Bathroom doors.

 

Yes. Apparently, this apartment was designed by some crazy ’70s commune architect with a lot of drugs and some concept of humans living naturally and harmoniously, by which I mean he put the bathroom in the hallway.  Or sort of, you know, made the hallway into the bathroom.  Or something. The point is, the bedrooms all open into what appears to be a miniature locker room, replete with two toilet stalls, sinks, and a shower stall.

 

And the housing people expect the students to keep this thing clean—when everybody knows that Freshmen Do Not Work That Way.

 

This was a bit of a shock to us all.** My sister is a neat freak, and she wasn’t thrilled with the state of the bathroom.  Nor was she happy about the fact that, since the toilet stalls were right next to her bedroom, she can hear everything going on in them, all the time.

 

So Mom graciously cleaned the hell out of the bathroom, and we tried to make the best of it, and left my sister in the Dump with the hope that she’d settle in.

 

Two weeks later, when she was still freaking out, we decided that we had underestimated her horror. After a bit of a trip round the College Resources, we settled on a housing dude who found her a nice, girls-only apartment with a bathroom that was actually, you know, a bathroom. And last weekend she moved in.

 

The change has been amazing.  She no longer sounds on the verge of a psychotic break.  She’s happy and actually concentrating on classes. Things are going well, and she’s doing a lot better.

 

Amazing how environment can make such a difference, can’t it?  And nobody deserves to live in a Dump, so I hereby tell you: if you don’t like a place, dammit get out.  It may be the place, and not you that’s the problem.

 

Now if only the economy doesn’t crash so bad we can’t afford to keep her there, I think she’ll do just fine.

 

 

*Liz and I named him Ned. We wanted to keep him, but that seemed unwise, so we gave him to our RA Elizabeth.  She promised to set him free far from any buildings.  We have it on good authority that she flushed him down the toilet immediately after we left.  Sorry, Ned.

 

**Especially my dear auntie, who went to visit my sister a week later and came back on the verge of hysteria.  “SHE NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO LOCK HERSELF IN WHEN SHE IS TAKING A SHOWER,” she opined.  “BECAUSE IF SHE IS SHOWERING AND THESE BOYS COME HOME FROM THEIR SPORTS, SINCE THIS IS A COED APARTMENT, WHAT IS TO STOP THEM JUMPING INTO THE SHOWER WITH HER? OR THE GIRLS.  THEY COULD BE LESBIANS, YOU KNOW, AND THEY WILL TRY SOMETHING.”  My aunt has an interesting definition of “coed.” It’s like she got it from softcore porn, except that she would not be caught dead viewing porn.

Comments

[crazykawaii.livejournal.com]

Wait, explain this bathroom thing - the toilets were in the hallway? Like out in public? Like anyone walking home can class can see you?

I am really hoping that what I am imagining is wrong and that there are at least doors in front of the toilets and curtains in front of the showers...

I am very glad your sister has gotten moved elsewhere!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

It's an apartment, with all the bedrooms opening into this big open bathroom area.

They were toilet STALLS, but they were in this niche in that big space.

And yeah, the shower had curtains.

BUT STILL.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I lived in a Dorm like that for a couple of years, but it wasn't coed. It was still pretty much a crap deal, though.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

...yeah, it's like voting machines with antivirus software.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*snert* I loved that one.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Bwah!

My senior year in college I shared an apartment with anywhere from 5-8 other people of varying ages and orientations. My then bf and I lived in what was originally the dining room. You know what? I adapted. Till the day we moved out there was a map to the laundry room on the back of the front door and instructions taped to the answering machine.

Of course, the variety of people was because half my original roomates skipped out mid-winter when they had a fight and then stopped paying rent. I took their asses to pro se court about it too! but in the meantime I had rent to pay, so the Chicago Fandom Boarding House was born. At one point we had a ex-military guy in the one bedroom (who liked to wander around in his underwear), a couple in the back bedroom - he was 7' tall and helped paint the ceiling without a ladder and she was 5'1, a surfer-dude just in from CA in the sun room, a chain-mail artist and painter in the middle bedroom, a college friend on the couch plus me and my soon-to-be-ex in the dining room. We had some awesome gaming nights though....

The artist kept threatening to write a play about all of us, and I would be the POV character on the phone in the hallway as all the drama payed out. This was because I happened to be on the phone in the hall when he walked in with a toilet under his arm, said "hello", walked into his room and shut the door. There was a bit of a pause in my conversation at this. (Now that I think about it, he eventually married the woman I was on the phone with at the time) He eventually painted it up with some acrylics, and we lined it with plastic and used it as a punch bowl. Then he hid a monster puppet in there and forgot about it until the day he was packing to move out. The scream was epic...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Life in the dining room wouldn't be so bad, really. But she didn't really like the bathroom setup, so why not change? I've adapted to some pretty bizarre situations, but I think it's okay to just say "The hell with this" if you have to.

Sounds like you guys had one hell of a sitcom going on there for a while. I'd have watched. ;)

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

at the distance of a couple of decades, it makes for some great stories.

At the time it was hell - I was ill with what is now called CFIDS, my roomies skipped out on me, we were getting eviction notices, I was trying to graduate from college, my parents were in the midst of a messy divorce, and my bf was in a car accident and started having seizures and personality changes.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Thank god for retrospect, huh?

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

"someday we'll all look back on this....laugh nervously and quickly change the subjecrt."

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Were there any other ways to get into the bedrooms, or did one have to walk through the giant communal bathroom space?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, apparently some bedrooms opened into some hallway around the back that you could get to if you walked a hundred more miles, but in order to get into the kitchen, or living room, or the front door, yeah, you have to go through the Locker Hall.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

That's just...weird. I cannot begin to comprehend how weird that is.

[neintales.livejournal.com]

Poor Ned.

And heh, that sounds like some of my relatives' ideas of coed too. (And like some cheesy role-play/fic I've written from time to time, but i digress..)

[pennyfeather.livejournal.com]

I think that may have been the only semi-useful thing Beth ever did as RA. :P

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I hereby tell you: if you don’t like a place, dammit get out. It may be the place, and not you that’s the problem.
Thank you.

The change has been amazing. She no longer sounds on the verge of a psychotic break. She’s happy and actually concentrating on classes. Things are going well, and she’s doing a lot better.
I have decided to take this as a good omen.