Should I even live in a dorm?

Give it a shot, as off-campus housing is really pricey

Look at it this way: if you or your potential roomie(s) don’t like what you’re doing for whatever reason, you can just move.

I find that roommates can be very considerate sometimes, and can also be VERY rude. I highly doubt that you’ll have trouble with a roommate if you stay up late at night, but i worry that you might have trouble sleeping in the afternoon with a roomie present.

I also find that living on your own (esp. if you’re not a terribly social person, which it sounds like you are) is much easier. You may not have a choice in this matter though (i.e. it may be too expensive, it may be too far, the people you’d live with are insane, etc.).

but please try to keep an open mind. I’m sure that even with a roommate, you will have fun and you’ll still be able to keep your own individuality and schedule.

Good luck!

I’ve always found that living on campus (while slightly more expensive) is EXTREMELY more convenient.

As far as your sleeping schedule, I hate to get on my soap box but… what career field do you expect to go into? I mean, if you have this crazy of a sleeping schedule now what will it be once you have a full-time job?

If your roommate happens to have issues with your sleeping schedule they can request changing roommates, but you also probably did a housing survey to match you and your roommate together, so if you’re lucky your roommate may have the same sleeping schedule.

This is such a personal decision. But you should ask yourself a few questions:

What experience will I gain through dorm life? Dorm living can teach you so many things about your ability to get along with other people. Your specific situation suggests that you may be a person who is difficult to live with – considering your current lifestyle. Unless you can choose your roommate, you can either tough it out and leave your arrangements to chance or you can opt out.

Roomates prepare you for group dynamic thinking. This can be invaluable later in life when you have to share officespace and even living space with a significant other. It also can provide a learning environment of support that is so vital to success in college.

If you have the option of living at home, that may be a better choice for you. Just remember that you can still experience campus life and campus activities, even if at the end of the day you have to go home.

If you are determined to continue your habit of sleeping during the day and staying up at night, you would not be a good roommate and should not be in a dormitory unless you can have a room to yourself.

I question, however, how you can function successfully in going to classes and the library, since their hours would likely conflict with your sleep schedule.

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I think your nocturnal lifestyle won’t fit in with most roommates. Roommate conflict then could put more stress than necessary. Avoid that.

Live where you’ll be comfortable and able to concentrate on succeeding your first year. Freshmen year is demanding and you’ll experience enough stress just getting used to college. Find an apartment.

I feel you. I, too, am nocturnal and was such all through college. I tried living with a dorm roommate with whom I had gone to high school, but she despised my boyfriend (with good reason – I broke up with him about 2 months later) and moved out on me, and I lived by myself the rest of my college career, sophomore year in a single-person dorm, junior and senior years in an apartment. My friend and I didn’t have too much trouble with schedules – when I would stay up all night writing papers, I’d just sit with my desk lamp on and she was able to sleep just fine.

Good things about dorms:

– You’re hardly ever going to find a better location in which you can roll out of bed and walk to class in five to ten minutes. This means you also don’t need a car.

– On-campus food plans are sometimes really good. I always rather missed our cafeteria food. It was excellent.

– It’s possible that you’ll meet more like-minded friends in a dorm, but I always met most of my friends in classes.

– You don’t need to buy a bed or desk.

– You never need to buy toilet paper or clean your toilet.

– You don’t have to pay for an apartment over the summer if you’re planning to live at home. (Apartments are year-round; dorms are not.)

– You don’t have bills (phone, Internet, heat).

Bad things about dorms:

– Other people are annoying.

– You can’t get away from your roommate because you’re stuck in the same room.

– If it’s a small college, you might have an extremely annoying housefellow who will monitor and judge your every move. There may be dumb rules about who you can and cannot have over when.

– Your roommate probably won’t want you to have your girlfriend overnight.

– Roommate schedules clash, like you’re worried about.

– They’re often far more expensive than off-campus housing, depending on whether or not you stay off-campus with roommates (cheaper) or alone (slightly more expensive).

– Communal bathrooms are kind of annoying, and it’s gross to wash dishes in a public sink.

– You can’t play music or watch TV when you want.

Like another respondent said, some schools actually require you to stay in the dorms your first and sometimes second year. Usually larger-sized schools that have a dorm shortage will not have this requirement. Anyway, if you’re not required to stay in a dorm, I encourage you to check out apartments around campus. Often you won’t have too much trouble finding one within walking distance – use Google Maps and find out how far the apartment addresses are from one of the main campus buildings.

Consider how many roommates you want (some places will house like six roommates, but you always get your own room, unless you agree to share). Consider that you’ll need a bed (around $150, if you don’t have one already) and some kind of desk (I use a $40 fold-up heavy-duty plastic table). I was able to find an efficiency apartment with my own bathroom with bathtub and kitchenette with a stove and full-sized fridge, which I absolutely loved. It was $415 a month with about $80 in electric and Internet bills, so plan for a similar price.

Always find out what kind of heat (gas or electric), who pays the water and electric, where to do laundry (my building had laundry) or whether you can walk to the nearest laundromat, how much phone/Internet will cost, whether there’s an air conditioner, and how good the maintenance is. Try to find a place with a grocery store or some kind of food shop or even gas station (where you can get milk, cereal, bread, and bananas) within walking distance.

Good luck! Check your university rules on dorms, then definitely check out apartments. I’ve found both of my apartments through online listings and I’ve loved them.

Besides your sleeping issues, what I find more concering is the isolation issues you will have if this continues (if you don’t have them already).

I’ve had insomnia issues since childhood, and have therefore spent a great deal of time being up in the middle of the night. I both love and abhor it, and I can embrace it and be productive as well as continue to fight it. I love being up alone, but I hate how it hinders me. During undergrad, I thankfully managed to fight this really well because I refused to miss out on anything. Being an energetic youth no doubt helped a lot. This is the deal – if you continue being up at night when you get to college, you will miss out on an enormous amount of opportunities.

These are going to be some of the best years of your life. Don’t waste them away alone because you’re convinced you can’t break out of a habit you’ve had since high school. It’s not worth giving up the much better quality of life you will have if you don’t find a way out of it. For your own sake, change that desire. You will regret it when you’re older. For your sleeping issues, see a doctor. And if you have isolation, socializing, etc. issues, see a counselor. If you can’t start counselling or therapy now, see a counselor when you get to school. There’s nothing they haven’t heard and they’ll have resources to help you.

You need to be up and functioning during the day in order to go to class, meet with professors, run errands, go to the library, attend functions (speeches, plays, etc.) at the student center or whatever. You need to be up because you have to promise yourself that you’re not going to be one of those college students who just goes to class and never gets involved in any organizations or activities and never makes any friends.

Live on campus. If you live off-campus, you will be isolated from much of the activities and fun that college freshman have. Live on campus, make friends, go to the dining hall with them, go out with them at night (even it it’s just for an hour), meet people and learn new things that will enrich your social life.

Stop telling yourself that you have no desire to change your sleeping schedule. You’re just digging yourself deeper that way. As an insomniac myself, I know how easy it is to fall into that and how much one can grow to love and appreciate being up at night, but if you are going to get the full college experience, which you deserve, you have to change that. You will also miss out on a lot by not living on campus your freshman year. You have your whole life ahead of you to live alone and stay up at night if that’s what you want. But for this experience, I hope you reconsider.

This is the time to change your life and figure out who you want to be in the future and what kind of adult you want to be, not the time to insist on being the same way you were in high school. If you insist on not growing, however uncomfortable that might be, you are cheating yourself. Again, for your own sake, I hope you reconsider.

There’s plenty of time when you’re older to be isolated and up all night – you’ll move to new places for jobs, friends get married, etc. This is your time to be around plenty of people in your age group. Use it.

If I didn’t think this was a big deal, I wouldn’t have bothered to write all this.

It depends, some universities restrict their freshmen and sophomores to living in on-campus housing. You may want to check on that before deciding.

i would recommend living in a dorm, for the social aspects