Undergrad Housing

I guess now would be as good a time as any to give you a rundown of my living situation during my freshmen, sophomore and junior years of college.  I had a deep fear of the dorms offered as on campus living, having heard numerous horror stories from those who forged before me about sharing showers/bathrooms, and even bedrooms with complete strangers.  I opted for off campus housing, not directly partnered with the school. 

For privacy reasons, I won’t name the apartment complex as it truly is.  For the sake of this blog, it will just be referred to as The Apartments.  Pretty complex, I know.  I chose to live at The Apartments because it was close enough to campus to walk to my classes, but still far enough away from them to allow non-school related functions.

I had a truck.  I actually chose to drive the long trek from Texas to Washington every time I decided to go home in-between semesters.  But walking to and from class in the nicer weather was really the only exercise I got, and I enjoyed it.

The Apartments were co-ed.  But not the co-ed you’re thinking.  They were co-ed in the sense that each apartment was designated for either males or females…but the apartments around you could be either.

Each apartment had six bedrooms, two bathrooms and one large kitchen/dining area adjoining the living room.  So every person had their own bedroom, but shared all the other areas.  There were probably about 8 apartment buildings that made up The Apartments, and each building housed about 20 apartments.  They were huge.  I was in building C, apartment 8. 

Expanding on the co-ed portion of this, to clarify, C8 was a female apartment, but the apartments directly across from ours, above our and under ours were male apartments.  I’m not sure how they staggered it all, or if there was any kind of system involved in the placement of their tenants, but they were really nice, fairly new, and didn't cost your soul to live in.

The thing that I most worried about when I moved in was whether I would absolutely hate the other girls I would be living with.  I don’t think I've mentioned it before, but I tend to run in a very small circle of friends that rarely branches out or accepts new members.  I had the same friends all throughout high school…about 5 total.  Living with a bunch of females, all ranging in age and personality was not something I was looking forward to.

I actually got pretty damn lucky.  Though we had a few girls move in and out throughout the years, we got along with most of them enough to make living with them bearable.  We never had all bedrooms full, so we lovingly turned the first two bedrooms into SMOOSH rooms (think Jersey Shore…). 

The circle of friends I hung out with in college were all my roommates.  I am really grateful that it turned out the way it had, because I don’t imagine I would have made very many friends otherwise. 

So I was assigned the 3^rd bedroom, which I was okay with.  For the first year, I didn't share a bathroom with anyone, since the other two girls had the last two rooms.  My two roommates, Cassie and Jessica were awesome.  Jessica moved out after the first semester, but Cassie and I lived together the full 2 ½ years.  We got really close and did absolutely everything together.  It was quite ridiculous. 

As I stated before, we had multiple girls move in and out during that time.  Our sophomore year, we had two girls move in who we did not particularly enjoy.  Renee and Jacqueline. 

Renee was actually still in high school, and a ward of the state.  Why the apartment complex thought it was a good idea to place a high school student, with issues, in with college girls is beyond me.  It really wasn't fair to any of us.  Needless to say, we did not get along.  It was a time of discord for us.  She was messy and dirty and kind of gross.  She brought a baby bottle with her…and displayed it proudly in our kitchen.  Yes, she drank out of it…so weird.  Try explaining that to people who came over.  She was also a bigger girl who had poor hygiene.  She was also a liar and drama queen.  Not the best combination.

Jacqueline was a straight up bitch, who by the end of the first semester of living together, everyone hated.  It didn’t start out that way.  She was a transfer student from another state and was pretty cool starting out.  We all kind of hated on Renee together and had a cordial relationship.  The only issue with her was that she was a stickler for The Apartment rules.  She advocated no drinking, no noise past 10 and no boys staying over. Of course, these rules could only be broken on her terms and no one else’s.  So really, she was fine with bending these rules if it benefited her, but if she was tired, or not feeling up to it, any and all fun was strictly banned after 10 PM.

One night, I think it was a Thursday and Cassie and I’s class had been cancelled the next morning, we decided to start the weekend early.  I won’t say that we were being particularly quiet…but we weren't being super loud either.  We were in the kitchen waiting for a pizza to arrive before heading over to the boys across the hall, some of them were with us.  It was a few minutes after ten.  One of the guys had just finished telling a funny story, and we were all in stitches over it.  Out storms Jacqueline.

She was being rude to our guests and screaming at us that we were being too loud and breaking the noise code.  She was screaming that the boys needed to leave and dropping f-bombs about them getting out and just being a crazy bitch.

I do not stand for that.  So a HUGE fight erupted.  Picture us standing toe to toe, in each other’s faces, both yelling our opinions about the situation.  I told her I was tired of the fickle shit she was pulling.  She needed to get over herself and stop trying to control the world.  She was not our mother.  I still get pretty annoyed when I think about it today.  She was yelling at me down the hall that I was a crazy bitch.  She also kept yelling things like: “I don’t know how you bitches here in Washington do things, but where I’m from this shit does not fly.”

No one ever told her that none of us were actually from Washington. At one point the pizza arrived, and the boys had to physically remove me from the apartment to prevent shit from going down.  I’m not a fighter, usually.  I was just sick of her crap.  She was a bitch.  We were all really glad when she moved out.

Then Danielle moved in.  We all really loved her!  She took the first bedroom, I had the middle one still and Cassie had the 2^nd to last one.  Renee was in the last one…but at this point we all just ignored her.

Does that make us rude?  Yes, probably.  But all of our interactions with her ended badly, so we just stopped interacting.  If you lived with her you would know.

Anyway, Cassie, Danielle and I all got along REALLY awesomely.  We did everything together.  We enjoyed living together and all grew to be really great friends.

Now…about the apartments around us.

Like I said, we had boys living across from, below and above us.  We enjoyed their company, and they seemed to enjoy ours.  We spent a lot of our time with the boys across from us.  They were all really attractive and fun to be around.  It was a fun relationship.

I actually did have relationships with some of them, so stay tuned for that when the time comes!

The boys above us were fun to be around too.  We mostly partied with them.  They always had alcohol, and weekends were crazy and loud!  I had relationships with some of them as well.

My undergraduate years were pretty boy crazy.  I had a lot of fun, with a lot of different guys.  I don’t regret very much of it.  More on that later.

It was a good time for me.  I found out a lot about myself and how I handle stress and boy drama.  I also got a really good feel for what I wanted out of relationships and what I wouldn't stand for.  College really was about learning how I wanted things to be in my life.

The Apartments were a bittersweet experience for me.  I met some really good friends, who I am still mostly in contact with.  I had some life changing experiences, and some pretty dramatic ones too.  I lost my virginity in them. More on that later.  I ended up moving out of them in the middle of my junior year after some pretty serious shit went down with me and my roommates and some boys.  I’ll get into that later as well.

Despite all of that, I look back on that time with relative fondness.  I learned a lot and gained a lot of useful experiences from living there.  But I don’t think I would relive it again.  Once was enough.

So there you have it.  My living situation and brief summary of my experiences during that time.  I will expand on some parts, as promised, at a later time.