OMGJeremy

Diary Of The Dorm Life

I was never fortunate enough to go to College after I got out of High School. I always wanted to, but several factors led to me never being able to be accepted into any colleges. Including, but not limited to:

1. I had no money
2. I wasn’t very smart
3. I was not a minority, at least as far as I knew.
4. I had the most average grades ever
5. I skipped 3/4 of of my time in High School. Spending most of it learning the finer points of ordering food from Taco Bell and falling asleep on mall benches.

So as you can see, I wasn’t exactly College material. And no matter how many times your school counselor may tell you otherwise, it’s damn near fucking impossible to get into college without having some type of semi-automatic firearm held to someone’s head. And even if you did that, you most likely wouldn’t get the classes you wanted before a SWAT team shot you in the face. As it stands though, that may actually be a better overall ending to your college career than actually going to one for four years or more, which is what I recently learned for myself.

Getting There

Even though I had always said I wanted to go to College, I had never actually “been” to one to see what it was actually like. It was like saying that you would like to live with Santa Claus because it seems like it would be really cool based on the few stop-motion animation movies you see on TV during Christmas. You’re basically going by a fantastical representation of what the real Santa and crew are like. So you automatically want to go live with him and his elves before you actually really see what it’s like, which is exactly what I was doing with saying I wanted to go to College, as I had given up on living with Santa Claus several years ago.

So anyway, a few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be invited to Buffalo State University to spend a week living the life of a College student first hand. I was happy that I would finally get to see what real College life was like, and in turn would hopefully fortify my attempts to go to a College myself. Or I would just quickly lose interest and return to playing video games.

First I had to get there though. My current hometown being Indianapolis, I immediately noticed that Buffalo was not within walking distance. My first option was to get a plane, but a high price tag coupled with my horrible fear of flying did not sit well. So I ended up taking the only other means of transportation afforded by a poor white boy: The Greyhound. I could spend several hours just writing about the various experiences that I’ve had on Greyhounds before, but seeing as how this article is supposed to be about Colleges and not about the black hole of shit that is the Greyhound, I figure I’ll just say that if I ever have the opportunity to return to Buffalo I will most likely hitch-hike, and pray that molesting hitch-hikers is passe.

A picture of me on arrival at Buffalo. As you can see I am excited.

On my arrival in Buffalo, I learned two very important aspects about Buffalo that was a constant the entire time I was there:

1. Buffalo seems to operate on a different temperature scale than every other place on Earth. The week I was there, the weather was proudly trumpeting that it would reach 45 degrees that day, which I guess is like a tropical climate in Buffalo. Now, coming from a cold state myself, I know what 45 degrees feels like, and 45 degrees in Buffalo is NOT what I consider 45 degrees. In fact, it felt closer to 2 degrees. This could also have something to do with the next point…
2. Buffalo is windy. And I don’t mean the friendly winds of Chicago that people sing about in old Fifties musicals. No, Buffalo is more like living in the middle of a tropical storm 24 hours a day. Except that the wind feels like it’s coming directly from the Arctic thanks to that whole wonderful “lake effect” bullshit. So in turn, a 45 degree day felt like -25, which the friendly weather people seemingly forgot to mention on the Weather Channel before I came which made me end up packing relatively un-warm clothes. Oh how I stare with contempt at the Weather Channel now.

If only this picture replicated the 60 mph wind tearing my flesh off

After getting off the bus and instantly having my entire body spasm from the sudden unexpected rush of 80 mph ice cold wind straight up my short-sleeved shirt, I was met by a few friends and then escorted directly to Buffalo State University. Once there, my College stay began in earnest as I was taken to the dorm room where I would be living for the next week.

My dorm. I was standing against the wall when I took this.

The first thing I noticed was that the dorm room was a lot smaller than I ever envisioned a dorm room being. Perhaps my views have been skewed from watching way too many College dramas on TV where the characters live in dorm rooms that are very spacious and can house crazy parties and such. As it stood, my dorm room could maybe house a crazy party consisting of two people. And that’s only if the second person didn’t show up. But small or not, I was living the college dream. Now all I had worry about was exactly what the fuck I was supposed to do to actually live the College dream.

Learning to Cope and Shower With Thousands of Other People

Dorm life is interesting to say the least. You live in a very large building (I was in the largest dorm building on campus) with hundreds of other people roughly your age, without any general supervision. This leads to an environment much closer to a prison without any bars, and prisoners are free to come and go and have sex with each other at their will.

The prison theme continued even to the bathrooms, which I discovered the night I got there. After spending twelve hours on a bus sitting next to people that I would normally run from in normal circumstances, I was ready to wash all the bus diseases off of me in a nice, relaxing shower. I immediately noticed that my dorm did not contain a shower, which concerned me just a bit. “Oh well, I guess they have private showers elsewhere,” I said with a smirk not unlike those seen on people who are overconfident and are about to have everything come crashing down when reality finally kicks in.

My reality came when I found that private showers were much more like the ones you might have had in your gym class in High School, except more disgusting. Your basic “restroom” consisted of a row of four toilets, and behind those were four showers embedded into the walls with two small pieces of torn shower curtain separating it from everything else. This was not good for me, since I am not the kind of guy that is comfortable with taking his clothes off in public and showering with other men. Call me crazy, but I feel that the idea of washing my crotch is not something that should be shared with other people. Plus, I feel like I should be making conversation the entire time…

Me: So… how’s that washin’ goin over there?
Them: …okay
Me: Boy, I tell ya it’s gettin harder and harder to wash the crack of my ass with these back problems…
Them: *leaves*

A close interpretation of the showers as represented by The Sims. Except no hot lesbian action occurred.

I decided to go ahead and try my luck with it, since I’m sure my new College peers would not appreciate me going un-showered for an entire week. The bathroom itself looked as if it had been shit out of a German war camp, as everything did not appear to have been cleaned since the early 1900′s. The showers themselves were even worse, as the walls had become a natural conservatory for diseased bathroom fungus to flourish. I was trying my best not to touch the walls, in fear that I would end up like that guy in that old horror movie where he touches some weird alien fungus and eventually turns into a giant alien fungus plant.

But even that was hard to do since I had approximately one square foot of space to maneuver in inside the shower. Things also became more complicated when I discovered my shower would randomly decide to cycle between “extremely cold” and “lava” no matter which way I turned the shower control. So my shower consisted of me trying to avoid both the walls and the water in strange spasmic jumps and movements most of the time, which I figured was some deity getting his daily laugh in at my expense.

Learning to Live Without Food

One thing that I quickly learned while living in the dorm, was that you will have to forget about what people have told you about that whole “You can’t survive without food.” This is because you won’t have any, or at least the amount you may be used to having at home. As for me, I was used to eating approximately 2.5 meals a day. Not exactly what I would call eating a lot. When I told this to my friend, they stared at me blankly and then pointed to a small refrigerator filled with a few slices of American cheese, some relish packets, and an opened Sunkist and said that would have to do for the week. I think the most amusing part was when I thought they were joking.

Food becomes a valuable resource in College.

In College, it seems there is little time for anything, let alone eating. You’re either running to classes, coming home from classes, then going to work, coming home from work, and eventually sleeping if time allows. Food eventually becomes something that you might remember a couple of days later as an afterthought. Kinda like, “Oh YEAH! I forgot to eat this week! DUH!”. Then your brain dies from malnourishment. But the point is, you really don’t have time to think about the things you need to live off of. You just do what you have to do, and most of the time that involves walking across campus in power-walk form since every class is separated by at least two miles of campus.

The Student Body: Ugh

College is filled with many, many, many people who are all without a doubt the most annoying people you will ever meet. But unlike the real world where you could always punch them in the neck and run, College is much different since you may be able to punch them in the neck and run, but most likely they’ll end up being your dorm roommate next semester. There is no getting away from the massive population that is your basic College. I quickly discovered this for myself.

In between my marathon walks across campus and avoiding the aching black hole that was slowly becoming my stomach, we would occasionally run into large groups of students standing around for no apparent reason. I was informed this was one of the student body’s days to gather dangerous amounts of people into a small building and yell loudly at random times. I was trying to make my way through the masses when I was apprehended at the exit by a man that opposed war and his sidekick juggler. He informed me that there would be an anti-war rally the next day and handed me a small leaflet. I grabbed the leaflet, while his sidekick juggled happily, evidently showing that juggling is what anti-war peeps are all about these days.

The flyer I recieved. Yes, juggling did start at 1PM

There was also a group upstairs holding a session called “Where is Jesus on Buffalo State University” which I really wanted to go to but was dragged away from. I was hoping for some sort of Where’s Waldo action that I could wildly flail my arms at and point Jesus out. And if not that then I had some very deep questions about my religion that needed to be answered, like:

• Why is the cafeteria food so expensive?
• Just where the fuck IS the cafeteria anyway?
• Your bathrooms are fucking nasty, you should clean them.
• What’s up with the weather? You guys are fucking crazy man!

I really wish someone could have answered those questions for me. Especially God.

I was also told that there are demonstrations and such held by the student body all the time, mostly as an excuse to skip a days-worth of classes to protest whatever the hot topic was in the news at the moment. I laughed because I really couldn’t see how anyone in College would ever have the time to protest things, especially considering the insane amount of money that they are spending to actually go to College. “How the fuck can any of these people afford to go to college?” I asked. “Side jobs,” I was told. And to back that up, the day before I came home I found the juggler guy juggling outside of a Subway sub shop for loose change. Oh the glitter and glory that is College!

Remember The Good Old Days

After day four or five, I began to remember the days before I arrived at the dorm. The days where vital organs didn’t freeze if I stepped outside. Where food was not something that seemed so far out of reach that it became an almost impossible dream to have meat on my mayonnaise sandwich. Where I had a mattress that didn’t seem to be made from rotting Nerf. Those were the days. I was at this point after a mere few days on campus. I’m not sure I could even imagine what four years on one would amount to. I’m not lying when I say I’d probably kill someone at some point in hopes that the local prison would offer a shorter walk to the fucking cafeteria.

A couple days later, I made my way back home. Thankful to be back to a home larger than the size of a closet. Maybe the College life just isn’t for me. That’s not saying none of you should shy away from it. I whole-heartedly recommend you get your ass to College if you haven’t done so already. Just make sure you can handle it before you commit.

As for me, I’ll stick with not wanting to kill myself on a daily basis.