Bathroom Therapy

 

“For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom.”

-Catherine Zeta Jones

“There is a jungle-cat in the bathroom!”

-The Hangover

Sharing a bathroom is never a fun experience, and when you get to college, getting up close and THAT personal is not really on your list of things to do. But guess what? Most of us do end up getting way too much information. When I got to school I was definitely hoping for a suite style room, which meant that I would only be forced to share gross habits with my roommate and two other girls. Lo and behold, I was stuck with a communal bathroom. After the initial panic subsided I spent a lot of time thinking of strategies on how to survive the countless repulsive situations I was sure to encounter and this is what I came up with:

1. Invest some time in learning how to hover. I mean obviously I won’t go into detail, but even when a bathroom is cleaned daily things can get dirty pretty quickly-especially when there are 20 girls using it.

2. Buy a toothbrush cover. Enough said.

3. If you don’t want people to use your products, don’t leave them in the bathroom. As a victim of the “sneaky person who keeps using my stuff when I’m not around,” I fully endorse this rule. While you hope that everyone is respectful and asks to borrow your stuff, there is always that one person you suspect of using your shampoo after you smell it in their hair.

4. Remember that just because someone is cleaning after you, does not give you license to throw caution to the wind and make a mess everywhere. Be kind, and clean your crap up!

5. Deal with the embarrassment early on. This is your home, your roommate’s home, and all your other hallmate’s home and all of you have to use the same potty. So get over it.

If you get stuck sharing a bathroom with other people, it’s not the end of the world! Not all sharing experiences are made for Hollywood Horror movies.

Party it Up

Partying is an inescapable part of college. I don't mean the crazy, get hammered, and forget what happened last night; I mean partying in the sense that there will be plenty of dancing, and hanging out with friends in small places with music. Although not everyone is attracted to hard partying, it has become a common phenomenon, one that that has been ingrained into the social psyche. While the ways of the party, dancing, loud music, and dark, crowded places have been quickly learned by generation after generation, the part about staying safe hasn't quite caught on. The following are some tips I've learned to avoid disastrous results.

• Never go to a party by yourself. The buddy-system is a lesson that will take you far, but going to a party in a group and leaving together is even better. Not only does going to a party together keep you from feeling awkward or alone, but whoever said that the phrase, "safety in numbers," definitely knew what they were talking about.
• Don't drink during the day. If you're underage you shouldn't be drinking at all, but let's face it lots ignore this law, so if you're going to drink do it safely. Drinking during the day only pushes you to drink more than you normally would, especially if you end up partying during the day and then also at night. Remember that the sole reason to go to a party isn't to drink, it's to have fun and hang out with friends, no one likes a chick that passes out at 11 at night. 
• Don't throw things. If a crowd gets rowdy and uncontrollable, try to leave, because alcohol and angry people don't mix well. Just this year, the JMU Springfest Blockparty in Forest Hill, turned dangerous when the crowd started throwing glass beer bottles. Private property was damaged, people left bleeding, ambulances were called, and the riot squad cleared the area with tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets.
• Lastly, listen to the police. If you do get caught in a situation like the one described above listen to the police. Yes, the threat of getting arrested for underage alcohol consumption is scary, but the consequences for ignoring police instructions is much worse.

So party, but party safe. Until next time guys!

Moving In

Moving into your first college dorm room is always an experience. Whether your new roommate is someone you’ve always known or a complete stranger, things can get a little awkward from time to time. For me, making friends with my roommate was easy. She was funny, pretty, confident, and most of all excited to be here and get to know me. It made getting along easy and to this day we still haven’t had a single fight. However, not all of us have this same happy joining, some of us actually have horror stories we end up passing on to siblings and friend. To avoid any type of ghastly scenarios that might be waiting to pounce on you always do the following:

1. As soon as you get into your dorm make your side your own. It’s important to feel at home here even if you won’t live there for more than 10 months out of the year. Bond through all the things you brought from home, because every picture and every trinket has a story to tell about you.
2. Make sure you’ve got the basics down like at what time do each of you have to get up in the morning, or which one of you is the morning person, is coffee going to be a necessity for the both of you?
3. Spend some time really developing your friendship with your roommate because they are the person you will be spending your first cold with, your first college parties, your all-nighters, and your boy/girl drama.
4. If anything ever bothers you make sure you talk it over with them as soon as it happens. Don’t wait until you’re too fed up with the other person to compromise.

I can’t stress the last of point on the list enough. My roommate and I have managed to skip any fights that might have come up, but it has been because we have been honest and understanding with each other (not an easy thing to do in a small, enclosed, sometimes crowded dorm room).

Murphy's Law

After the first couple of weeks life starts getting back to normal. You develop a routine, you decide whether a dry erase board with all your appointments is really necessary, and the friendships you’ve made start to set in. This is when trips to go back home if you live close enough start being planned and by now you can even get around campus without getting lost. Don’t be fooled, this is not the time to slow down and start thinking that things are going to get easy from now on, as I learned the hard way.

At this time in my life I thought I was finally getting everything right, that things might get easy and I might be able to coast for a few weeks, but of course everything went wrong from alarms that didn’t ring, to getting sick for the first time while away from home, and no one can forget the first time they lock themselves out of their room with only a towel for protection between them and the whole word. Not to mention the honeymoon period for you and your roommate is just about to expire. 

What can you do to avoid life crisis after life crisis? Accept that disaster is inevitably headed your way, in other words: anything that can go wrong, WILL go wrong. Every time you leave your room without keys double check that it’s not locked, keep Dayquil and Nyquil on stand-by when the flu hits, set up more than one alarm to wake you up, and lastly make a conscious effort to keep the grumpiness directed at your roommate to a bare minimum. It’s important to keep a positive attitude and smile even when you don’t feel like it.

The Drop Off

So, you’re finally in college, the parental unit has driven away and you ask yourself, What do I do now? Let me tell you a little secret: we’ve all been there. No matter how prepared to cut the umbilical cord we were at home the realization that you are now essentially on your own hits you like a ton of bricks. Suddenly the list of choices and decisions that you have to make your freshmen year seem impossibly long and Mommy and Daddy aren’t there to chose for you. 

This is why you’re here. Nearing the end of my freshmen year, at JMU this blog will take you through all the things I learned, heard, saw, and avoided. Survival guide? Maybe. A life boat out in the ocean of endless possibilities? Definitely.