The college experience. A term often used at college recruiting events. Every college claims to have the capacity to offer you just that.
The college experience is a thrilling, once in a lifetime thing that everyone should take full advantage of. If you ask me, living on campus is essential to the college experience. It is one of the most important aspects of the growing-up process, you grow so much more as a person, not just as a student, when you leave the nest during your college years.
The most compelling argument I can make for the importance of living on campus during college is that it is the only time in your life when you can be completely on your own without being completely on your own.
Now I know that sounds completely contradictory, but consider this: you are completely independent in the sense that you can decide what you want to do on a day- to-day basis, you can build your own life for the first time ever.
But while you’re learning to survive on your own, there are resources built in to help you succeed. There is certainly something to be said for having all of your college or universities resources right at your fingertips whenever you need them.
You have complete freedom to enjoy your independence, have fun, try new things and learn how to be an adult while your meals, housing and other basic needs are already provided for you.
That time to explore, grow and change while knowing that you are still protected and taken care of to a degree is so crucial for the development of young adults.
As Hara Estroff Marano explains in an article for The New York Times, “…students are learning to balance all their needs on their own, typically for the first time in their lives.
Today’s students are often well prepared academically but have zero experience in self-management, as their lives have been highly engineered by parents, coaches, guidance counselors and others. It also provides a relatively safe context in which students can practice self-discipline”.
I strongly believe that you truly learn the most about yourself when you go away to college because you finally get to discover what kind of decisions you make and what kind of person you are without your parents and other mentors telling you what you must do.
One of the best things about living on a college campus is that you encounter problems. I have learned the most about living an adult life while here on campus from the moments when I was not sure what to do, and that happens a lot.
Things break, confrontations occur, plans fall through, you get sick, you get stressed and you have to deal with it.
You quickly learn that there is only so much your parents can do over the phone from miles away.
For example, my dorm room has had a TV malfunction just about weekly since we moved in.
Thus, I have learned more about TVs and how they work in the last three months than I have in my eighteen total years of living at home. It is really amazing what you learn how to do and how to deal with when you have no other choice.
Not only have I become more independent and learned a great deal about myself as a result of my time living on campus, I have learned so much about others and have formed strong bonds with the people I live with.
Being exposed to many different types of people by living in community with them teaches you to keep an open mind. It may test your patience, but it also improves communication skills and interpersonal skills.
There’s something both fun and comforting about a group of people your age all living in the same place, struggling with the same things and figuring it out together.
I cannot begin to describe how much I’ve changed and how much I’ve learned in the year and a half I have spent living on campus.
I know that campus housing is often expensive and may not be a reality for some students. But I strongly encourage anyone that has that opportunity to take it. Living on a college campus gives you an opportunity to grow and change in a way that living in the safety and comfort of your own home cannot.
Bridget Goedke
Viewpoints Editor