Home Life vs Dorm Life - Essay Example

Home Life versus Dorm Life Every young person starting college education ought to decide whether it is necessary to live in on-campus dormitory or at home. While on-campus dormitories continue to help many students, a clique still hold opposing opinion to life in campus hostels. It is one of the most significant changes for a student entering college to change from home to dorm life. It remains an important event in her or his life. The situation is because the change happens as the first-ever extreme life change besides the consequences of such a change remain unknown. The two aspects of living namely; dorm life and home life are representations of two variant ways of living in different conditions. However different the conditions are, they also share a few similarities. The similarities and differences come out only well after thorough analysis of the two conditions. A decision by a first year college student to either reside in campus or off-campus ends up having total transformation of his or her life (Morris, 2008, 77). It is inevitable that staying in campus hostel will influence the life of a college student and staying at home has its pros and cons. Living in campus hostels exerts a pleasant experience on one student and an awful ordeal for another. Living in the dormitory is a necessity for some people. The forms of advantages and benefits compared for the two living conditions relate to closeness in terms of accessing classes and campus, cost advantages, availability of affordable and nutritious food, additional benefits of education to the student, as well as available opportunities for student to involve in such as entertainment and co-curricular activities. Living off-campus means that a student will commute to campus because he or she lives in an apartment, a fraternity, or a sorority. Living off-campus lacks the advantage of proximity to campus and classes. It would require some of the student who do not live in campus hostels to travel long tiring distances every morning to get to class and have to wake up early enough to catch up with early classes and in some cases avoid traffic jams on the way to college. Those who already live in college hostels do not have these problems. The situation presents a problem to students especially in times of winter. During this season students do not like waking up therefore, skiving classes becomes a common occurrence. Beds become far more inviting during winter compared to the journey to class. The cost of living outside for instance, in an apartment can be very high. In some regions like Iowa advertisements for apartments average $ 350 every month exclusive of cost of utilities and it comes with a condition of sharing the apartment with other roommates. However, on other occasions students choose to live off campus to save money but this depends on the region (Baillie, Pawley, and Riley, 2012, 89). Among other factors under consideration, sharing a room with friends and doing personal cooking costs less than staying in the campus hostels. As much as staying in campus comes with two great advantages being proximity to the lecture halls and the social atmosphere, the latter could come out as one of the greatest disadvantages to students. It exposes students to little privacy and too much unnecessary noise. Living off-campus presents a chance to the student to get away from distractions, noise, constant engagements with other students, as well as partying. A student learns various ways of being responsible when he or she pays rent, lives in an apartment, commutes to class the same way he will commute to work, pays utility bills, and carries out his or her own cleaning and cooking. These functions teach him or her to develop responsibility. Living off-campus by a student develops rental history. The feature helps him or her when looking for subsequent apartments later in her life. However, it is essential that his or her rent history remains good. It is common that students living off-campus have non-student neighbours. A student may find himself sharing an apartment with young couples, professionals, elderly retirees, and on sometimes families that have children. The situation provides diversity to the student. The opportunity allows the student to mingle with and get to comprehend better various types of people. Different objective facts relate to living in the dormitory. To begin with, a student living in the college hostel will have to accept the necessity of living with two or three other students. Only those with exclusive positions in college such as those in student unions and councils can enjoy the luxury of having rooms without roommates. The second feature regards the quality of beds that often requires repairs and at times the closets do fit the belongings of all the occupants of the room (Bodley, 1983, 56). Hostels do not provide the student with actual kitchens and lacks refrigerating equipment. Under rare conditions does a student find comfortable public bathrooms in the rooms at the university’s halls of residence. Living in campus eliminates privacy form a student because he or she is hardly alone. However, staying in college presents a person with opportunity of interacting with peers whom they share qualities ad characters. One other negative perspective of living in the dormitory is that it creates falls independence and in most cases results to early sexual intercourses among students. On the contrary, students living off-campus do not find adequate academic support. Living among other people distracts the student as they may not share same academic objectives with roommates within the apartments. The apartments do not have the sense of community found within the realms of the university. The environment in the large apartments outside campus is not as open and warm as that found in the precincts of college. The situation makes it difficult for a student to fully participate in campus clubs and other sports activities. The feeling of the distance from college eliminates the sense of connection to the institution (Compton, 2014, 16). Living at home presents the student with an opportunity to eat healthy food, freshly prepared in a normal kitchen. Cooking the food means that the student can save some money spent on buying food while residing in campus hostels. It directly influences the individual budget of the student in a positive way. Living at home comes with developing the qualities of completing personal chores similar to those in life after campus. The student takes time while at home to handle personal hygiene because the process remains private. It is also essential to identify that living at home provides a chance for a student to receive friends and other people without a notice beforehand. Primary differences between living off-campus and dorm living revolve on the interests of the student and his or her aims in life. Works Cited Baillie, Caroline, Alice Pawley, and Donna Riley. Engineering and Social Justice: In the University and Beyond. West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press, 2012. Internet resource. Bodley, Thomas. The Life of Sr Thomas Bodley, the Honourable Founder of the Public Library in the University of Oxford. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1983. Print. Compton, John W. The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution. , 2014. Print. Morris, Raymond N. Urban Sociology. New York: F.A. Praeger, 2008. Print. Read More