Living in a dorm hall 🏠
Aloha 🌺👋🏼
Our dorm hall has 4 floors (guess on which floor we live... - right, 4th floor) with four hallways. Each hallway has bathrooms for boys and girls (1 toilet + 2 showers + 3 sinks), so that means sharing. It isn't too bad because as long as nobody does something gross, everything is fine. And the bathrooms are cleaned everyday - expect for the weekend. It feels a bit like living in a hostel at the moment and I really wonder if this feeling will change some time in the future. And if someone on your floor does something stupid, most of the time everyone has to pay for it...
Every Friday evening, our RA's are organizing some activities where everyone living in our dorm can participate. It's really awesome (it mostly has something to do with food) and you get the chance to get to know new people each Friday! Until now we had a French Toast and a Nacho night 😋 Our RA's are really kind and they really make great efforts to help us feel comfortable (and according to my opinion they are doing a great job!). If you have any problems or concerns, you can always talk to them (if you're comfortable with it) and they will help you.
So how is it to actually live in this room? (the room in total is a bit bigger than my room at home which is about 12 m2, so I'm used to the size).
But there isn't just a roommate you have to get used to, there are other people around you too (like your neighbors) and this people can keep you from sleeping sometimes. The walls are really thin here, so you can here almost everything and feel everything (I sometimes had the feeling that our neighbors where jumping against the walls). The first week was a bit tough because everyone around us decided to play music the exact moment we wanted to sleep. But again: communication is the key. All people around here are really nice and they will understand your problems. You normally also have quiet hours after 10pm from Sunday to Thursday and after 12pm from Friday to Saturday which really helps. And if everything goes wrong you can talk to your RA's or the campus police.
Yes, your read right, we have a campus police. But I don't feel scared at all, it really makes me feel safer. I met some of the police officers and I just can say that they are really nice and that they will definitely do everything they can to protect you. But you really don't want to get in trouble with these guys - just DON'T! Since they work on campus, some officers cover specific regions on campus, including the dorms - so you might see some standing next to your dorm room doing regular checks. And that was something that I experienced. I mean there is nothing bad about it. But as I was getting up to go to my dorm room, I was shocked at first! Seeing a police officer usually means that something has happened or that you did something wrong. But he was just walking around to see if everything is fine. We talked a bit and everything was fine, like I said: really nice guys! (This will probably happen again, and I will probably be shocked because I'm not used to the presence of policemen!!! - And I'm really sorry if I do something weird while encountering the situation. And if someone of the policemen should come across this blog: thank you for doing you work, you are doing an amazing job!).
And we already had a fire alarm this week - I'm not really sure who or what caused it - but it was a Friday night before a 6 am practice the next day... so that wasn't really funny... But now we know what to do in the case of an alarm... 🚨
From my first blog post you all should/might know that I live in a dorm hall, in a dorm room together with my roommate Emma!
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| A picture of us after Emma's first xc meet |
Here, at UMaine, every freshmen has to live in a dorm hall on campus, except for certain criteria (e.g. being over 21, living right next to campus, ...). We should all get the "full college experience". And if you think about all these American movies, you are on a good way.
Our university has about 7 different dorm halls for the freshmen. All dorm halls are named after Maine counties (I live in Knox Hall, and our university lies in the county of Penobscot). I only know my dorm hall pretty well, so I just begin describing it.
Btw: "Knox" - doesn't there ring a bell in the back of your head? - Yes, it is Knox as in Fort Knox ("Secured as Fort Knox").
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| Knox Hall - our dorm hall |
You can find a common room in the middle of each floor where you can study, hang out with your friends, or where you might have meetings with your RA's (older students who look after us, help us, and try to make our experiences better).
We have a TV room with a microwave on the first floor, a bike storage (biking in the winters might be a little too dangerous), and a laundry room (wohoo...) in the basement. And there is probably more stuff which I haven't discovered yet.
Every Friday evening, our RA's are organizing some activities where everyone living in our dorm can participate. It's really awesome (it mostly has something to do with food) and you get the chance to get to know new people each Friday! Until now we had a French Toast and a Nacho night 😋 Our RA's are really kind and they really make great efforts to help us feel comfortable (and according to my opinion they are doing a great job!). If you have any problems or concerns, you can always talk to them (if you're comfortable with it) and they will help you.
So now I'll come to the interesting part of this post: the dorm room. You all might wonder how my room/my side of the room looks like and how it is to live here.
Each dorm room has a bed (you can decide if they are high or low lofted), a shelf, a chair, a desk, a closet, and a clothes rail for each person. And we have a door and a window (kind of obvious, I know). Our dorms are secured with our student ID (the MaineCard is the most important thing here, you use it to get into your dorm hall, your dorm room, you get food with it, and so much more) and a code, if you lock yourself out for 4 time, you will have to pay for it 😳 - I'm really happy that I didn't locked myself out yet!!!
And the pictures on the side show you how my side of the room looks like.
Since I have school and practice, I'm not much in my room. I mostly study at the Field House because it is easier to concentrate there. Mostly for the evenings and sometimes at the weekend. Living in here is different from home - of course- because you have just the things you really need. But since I'm almost never in my room it really is okay.
And I'm happy that Emma and I get along really well (when you read this, I hope you agree 😂) because dorm rooms can get pretty small when you don't like your roommate.
In the beginning, I had concerns about living together with someone I barely now, on little space, for one year, but all the concerns are gone now! Since we didn't do random (we "met" over Facebook), we were in contact for about 3 months and had some time to get to know each other a bit. There still is a difference between online and face-to-face communication but we get along really well! I guess it really helps that we are both student athletes, so we know which difficulties both of us can face. And communication is a great key to success. If you just communicate what bothers you and how it could be better, your roommate will probably understand - I mean you both have to get used to this new situation!
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| My French toast 😍 |
Yes, your read right, we have a campus police. But I don't feel scared at all, it really makes me feel safer. I met some of the police officers and I just can say that they are really nice and that they will definitely do everything they can to protect you. But you really don't want to get in trouble with these guys - just DON'T! Since they work on campus, some officers cover specific regions on campus, including the dorms - so you might see some standing next to your dorm room doing regular checks. And that was something that I experienced. I mean there is nothing bad about it. But as I was getting up to go to my dorm room, I was shocked at first! Seeing a police officer usually means that something has happened or that you did something wrong. But he was just walking around to see if everything is fine. We talked a bit and everything was fine, like I said: really nice guys! (This will probably happen again, and I will probably be shocked because I'm not used to the presence of policemen!!! - And I'm really sorry if I do something weird while encountering the situation. And if someone of the policemen should come across this blog: thank you for doing you work, you are doing an amazing job!).
And we already had a fire alarm this week - I'm not really sure who or what caused it - but it was a Friday night before a 6 am practice the next day... so that wasn't really funny... But now we know what to do in the case of an alarm... 🚨
I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to message me about questions.
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C y'all soon!
Anna
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