 Oh, a bug just flew so close to my head. And, and today I'm here with my roommate Bailey. And today we're going to talk a little bit about what our dorm experience was like when we lived in the dorms because we lived together the first year, the second year, and we live in the department together now with some other friends. So I'd say we were a pretty successful roommate duo. So I know when I first was coming to college, my like probably my biggest anxiety was who my roommate was going to be. I was going random from really far out of state. So I didn't know anyone going into college. And I knew that like my roommate was probably going to be like one of my first real friends. And I was really excited, but also very apprehensive that like we wouldn't get along or we just like wouldn't like each other. But thankfully it worked out really well. We're still very close. Haven't gotten tired of each other yet. Which honestly, given the time we've lived together, it's pretty impressive. So yeah, so like she said, we both came from very far away. I came from Colorado. She came from Virginia. And we did text and talk a little bit before we moved in just because we had to figure out some logistics like, you know, who was going to rent the fridge, the microwave, that kind of stuff. We did talk a little bit about our interests, but when I got there, Bailey had already moved in. And so I was in our room and suddenly she appeared. She gave me the biggest hug, like the most high energy hug I've ever seen probably. And that's kind of what I knew that we're going to be really good friends. And I'd also like to point out that we, I mean, it might be obvious, but we did not know each other before college and that is okay. I think some people do request roommates, but I think it's a lot more common to choose the random method of getting a roommate. It's not totally random either. Like I remember we filled out a little kind of questionnaire about our general living habits like, you know, what time you wake up, what time you go to bed, if you're clean or messy. And like honestly, I don't know if any of that really held true because we had a pretty chaotic life just with waking up earlier, going to bed late. So I'm not sure if that's very accurate, but worked out really well for us. I would also really recommend going random. I know a lot of people were really scrambling to find something they knew to request, but I made a lot of really good friends this way. I'd also say something that was really helpful the first year especially was just leaving our door open whenever we were both, or like one of us was home or we were both home because we were pretty close with like the majority of the people on our hall or at least like knew them by name and like could talk to them if we needed to. And I think was super beneficial because we met a lot of people just by watching movies together or just hang out in the hallway together. And another thing that I liked was that our building had a lot of common spaces. So I mean, even if it was just with our friends, you could like watch movies in there, we could do arts and crafts in there. We had a couple of like holidays in there. We had a friend's giving in there. We did Secret Santa. It was fun just having that like community of people, like 40 people always around you, which was really nice. Definitely recommend just going to inviting people into your room, being like, hey, do you want to hang out? Do you want to make tea together? Do you want to make popcorn and eat popcorn together? I have chips and salsa, you know, just something small, especially in the first two weeks when no one really has homework to do and no one really knows what they're doing and no one really has any friends. It's a really good way to make friends. It's just to talk to people and it's kind of difficult. But once you understand that like everyone feels the same way and everyone feels that relief when you go up and talk to them and like make connections, it really helps. So another thing was that we just coexisted really well right from the start. I mean, I don't remember any like huge fights we had who definitely like tease each other about some of our lifestyle choices. LaCroix. You had coconut water in the fridge at one point. Okay, that's fair, you know, but it... Other than that, we respected each other's space a lot. We honestly like studied a lot together in the room. That's kind of one of the advantages of having your own room, I would say, is that you can A, like use the space how you want to and B, you can really make it your own. Like we one day came home and just said, we're going to reorganize the room and we moved every single piece of furniture. And that's kind of just the power you have, you know, like you can change your space up. It's that's a nice advantage of living in the dorm. I do it frequently and really it helps break the monotony of college. And respecting your roommate's space is very important. So if you come into the room and your roommate's studying, let them study. Maybe don't start a conversation just then, let them do what they're doing. And I found that that's a really good way to set boundaries pretty early on. Every floor and all of the residential dorms have an RA, which can be a really great resource for meeting new people. In our buildings, we had lots of activities like Bob Ross, paint and non-alcoholic sips. We carved pumpkins. There was free succulents that you could pot with your friends. Free donut day. Free donut day. Oh my gosh. The donut day was something. Which I just recommend going to. Even if like your friends have grown up for that night, like go see who you can meet. It's in your building. It'll take you like 30 seconds to get there and it'll probably get something free out of it. So some downsides of living in a dorm are just kind of that you're at the mercy of everybody else. So like if someone sets off the fire alarm at 4 a.m., like 700 people have to evacuate. And you might be in the shower when the fire alarm goes off. The fire alarm goes off and your roommate hypothetically is in the shower. Grab a sweatshirt on your way down. Grab a sweatshirt. It was maybe 30 degrees. I was completely soaked. I literally had shampoo in my hair. The fire alarms are loud in the bathrooms. And yeah, we were outside for a good 30 minutes. Similarly, like it can just get to you sometimes to like live around so many people. Like you might be fine for like a month and then suddenly you're like this microwave is disgusting. Like I don't want to use it. And it's like you like it's not really your fault, but like it's just something that happens in your environment as a result of like living with other people, you know? Along the same topic being at the mercy of the people around you, it was finals week. I had a chem exam at 7.30 and that's the next morning. It was 11 o'clock at night. I was asleep in bed and we heard this music playing from one of the common rooms. And I guess maybe someone was watching a movie or someone was having a little study party in the middle of the night, but all of the nursing students also had that exam that next morning and it happened that like 10 or 15 of us lived on that hall at the same time and not three minutes after the music started. Every single... I opened the door and looked out and every other nursing student had also like like pulled that door open. It was looking out like what is going on. We have an exam tomorrow. It's so late at night. Well, it wasn't really that late, but it was late for finals week and they do have a mandatory 24 hour quiet hours during finals week, but just someone wasn't abiding by that. It got shut down pretty quick because it was very loud and very disruptive, but that is kind of one of the disadvantages of living in a dorm room if someone's not thinking. They can really disrupt your night. Yeah, but on the other hand, we did make a blanket fort during finals week and that was a lot of fun. There's also a lot of fun things about living in the dorms. At some point you all just kind of get this really good energy like at the end of the day when you come back from classes and it's not like a super stressful week and it's just a really fun time to like have that many other people to hang out with. Another perk is that like Uber Eats and Dora Dash and Grubb have a bunch of those different services can bring food to you. We definitely ordered food way too often, but you know, again, good memories came out of it. We did a lot of goofy things throughout the year. You have to, you know, have fun to be able to get through college. We did a lot of studying, but we also had a lot of fun. We took a lot of selfies. We took a lot of Snapchats. We made some TikToks and that's just how it is. It's a good mix of all of the things you've mentioned so far. There's certainly more advantages than disadvantages living in the dorm and you certainly make a lot of really good memories. I recommend like saving the videos that you take or like the Snapchats, I recommend saving them. We used to stay up maybe a little bit too late at night sometimes, way too late. Very frequently. It was just really funny just Kira and I would just like hang out together and we would talk and we would laugh really hard. Things like shadow puppets. We figured out the height of our room was the exact height of Bailey on the chair holding a ruler. We would fill up our humidifier at like 2 a.m. Yes. Stuff that's not funny. Like you make the memories, you know? And we were like just talking out like sophomore year was fine in the dorms, but that first year like we made so many good memories just living in the dorms. It's like an experience that you just don't know what you're going to get until you get there but it's going to be really fun. So I think that's like a pretty good summary of dorm experience, what to expect your first year of living in the dorms at UVM or anywhere. Thanks for watching as always and we'll see you in the next one. Bye!