Category: Residence Life

Posted on by — Leave a comment

How to Choose Your Freshman Roommate

Grove City College Roommates

So you have decided on a school and you are ready to start thinking about the year ahead. If you are planning on living on campus you are probably thinking about your roommate situation. Going with a random roommate assigned by Student Life and Learning is always an option, as is choosing a roommate based on information from a variety of different outlets. Some people will tell you to choose a roommate to avoid a horror story, but some will tell you that you do not know a person well enough before college and that going random is a better option. It depends on your personal preferences which you go with, but if you are going to choose a roommate there are some important things to look for.

When I was a senior in high school I decided that I wanted to look for a roommate who I thought I would get along with well. I am now a senior in college and am living with the same person who I requested on Grove City College’s roommate finder four years ago – we are incredibly close and love sharing a room with one another! In the spring of our senior year of high school, we connected via our class’s Facebook page and got to know one another over text messages and the Grove City College Roommate Finder application.

As you are getting to know a potential roommate, it is important to dig deeper than small talk and hobbies and get to know one another’s living preferences and styles.  Here are the top five things to find out about a potential roommate:

1. Personality Type

By personality type, I am referring to your levels of particularity and speed of life. Going into college I knew that I needed to find an easy-going roommate who would not grow frustrated with my Type A personality and constant need to do something. I also knew that I would not live well with someone who was equally as particular as me. This has nothing to do with extroversion or introversion, and each pairing will be different – while I needed a Type B roommate, somebody else with a similar personality to myself may work best with another similar roommate. It all comes down to knowing yourself and knowing who you work best with – if you tend to clash with a certain kind of personality, that is not the kind of personality you should choose to live with.

You can learn this about a potential roommate by directly asking how they view themselves (though people will be varying levels of self-aware) and through everyday conversations as you get to know one another. For this reason it cannot hurt to start the process early – even if you do not find a roommate, you could find a great friend!

2. Cleanliness and Clutter

Do you expect that your beds are made, prefer that they are made, prefer that they are not made, or have no preference? Do you expect dirty laundry to be out of sight, is it okay for laundry to be in a basket but visible, or is it okay for laundry to be in a pile on the floor? Do you care if the room is vacuumed? Do you expect to share vacuuming duties with your roommate, or are you okay with doing it yourself?

These are just some of the things to think about in regard to cleanliness and clutter in the room. There are so many different ways to address cleanliness in a dorm room, and it is difficult to foresee all of the possibilities before arriving on campus, but you can think about it with potential future roommates by discussing dorm room clutter and cleanliness in general.

3. Room Temperature Preferences

While you do not have control of the thermostat in your dorm room, you can impact the temperature in your room by opening or closing the windows and using a fan. I tend to run warm on a day to day basis, so I definitely prefer the room to be cooler, and so I needed to find a roommate who did not prefer a toasty room. This one is simple enough to find out – just ask!

4. Sleep Schedules

While working out sleep schedules is hugely important to a college roommate relationship, it is difficult to accurately predict what your sleep will be like at college until you arrive. Definitely talk through what time you prefer to go to sleep and wake up with a potential roommate, but the best advice I can give you here is to give one another grace in this area. When you decide to live together you may both think that going to sleep at 11 p.m. and waking up around 7 a.m. sounds great, but after arriving at college it is very possible that one of you will change that schedule.

5. Guests

Are you okay with having guests in the room? Can friends be over at any time, or is there a “friend curfew”? There are lots of ways to address this, and it is another one that is difficult to know before arriving on campus, but it is important that it be an open discussion.  Unless you are a very deep sleeper, I highly recommend setting the boundary that friends not be over when either roommate is sleeping, but aside from that different roommates will have different preferences in this category. One thing in this realm that you will not have to work through as much as in other schools is that guests of the opposite gender are only allowed in your room at certain, set hours called Open Hours. While it may be frustrating for your roommate to have his/her significant other over every time there are Open Hours, you will not have to worry about them sleeping over in the room or being over every day.

Your Roommate Relationship

These are just scratching the surface of what plays an important part in the roommate relationship, but they are things to discuss before agreeing to live someone – especially someone who you have not met in person yet. No matter what, just remember to give one another grace to grow and change, and you will be okay. Do not be afraid to have direct conversations about the way you live together, and try to keep it an open conversation in order to avoid difficult confrontations or passive aggressive situations that can be even worse. Roommates can become some of your best friends, but it is okay if you are not incredibly close.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

It is Finals Week!

It is the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, finals week is fast approaching. While some students dread finals week, others say that it is their favorite time of the semester. Why is that? It is the time where there is a whole day reserved in the middle of the week to study, called Study Day.  There are no other assignments due and just some tests to take. Once the final test is over, a feeling of relief comes over me. I am done with that class forever!

So how do finals work at Grove City College? Below is the final exam schedule for this semester. Every professor is required to give a final exam.  Exam week begins with night class exams being held on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Thursday is Study Day. Study Day is great because there are no other activities scheduled and the buildings on campus are all open for students to utilize. If you get up early, you can choose the best spot to study. The rest of the exams are then held on Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. Final exams have a two-hour time limit, though in many of the exams I have taken I do not need the full two hours.

 

As a senior, I will list the pros and cons of finals week from my experience here at Grove City College.

Pros:

-Not easy to get distracted because there are no other assignments due

-Just focus on studying

-No other activities or events are planned

-Study Day is essentially a “free day”

-Can study anywhere

-Many churches open their doors and allow students to study there

-Once you finish the final exam, you are done with the class!

-Winter break is approaching soon!

-You can take the exam as fast as you would like, and then leave when finished

-No more homework or assignments

Cons:

-You do have to take a bunch of tests

-More material to memorize since it is comprehensive

-So many essays!

-A two-hour time limit may be not long enough for some students

-Not much social time since everyone is studying

-Can get boring if you have already studied and there is nothing else to do on campus

-We get out later than most schools for winter break

-Possible bad weather

-If you make some friends in that class, you may not have class with them again

-You may really enjoy the class and not want it to end

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Living on Campus: What is an RA?

Living on Campus, MAP Residence Hall

You may have heard people talking about RAs or heard about them from people who have gone to college before you, but you still do not know exactly who, or what, that is. RA stands for Resident Assistant, and your RA at Grove City College will be an upperclass (sophomore through senior) student of the same gender as you. There is either one or two RAs per hall, but there may be multiple halls on a single floor depending on the size of the particular residence hall. RAs are present in freshmen and upperclassmen buildings alike. But what does an RA do and how will they affect your time at Grove City College?

Your RA will live on the hall with you, and will likely be one of the first upperclassmen that you meet upon arriving at Grove City College. If you are a freshman female, you will more than likely have two RAs, and if you are a freshman male you could have either one or two. I am an RA on a unique hall this year – my residents are 1/3 freshmen and 2/3 transfers, so my freshmen are in the minority of females who have one RA their freshman year. You will meet your RA on orientation move-in day (if not earlier, via email or because you have arrived early for a sport or club), and they will help to make your transition to Grove City College as easy as possible.

Relationship Building Roles

When you first arrive you will probably have many questions about campus and living away from home, and your RA is a great resource for when those questions arrive. Your RA will also likely hold casual events on the hall like movie nights and game nights in order to get to know you better as well as to help you meet the other people living on your hall. Many RAs on campus will keep their doors open regularly, and oftentimes these casual events occur spontaneously as people stop by – keep your eyes open for these opportunities to build relationships with the people living around you!

Your RAs will also host several more formal events throughout the semester, called RA Programs (though they will likely be advertised with different names). These are events funded by Residence Life, which means that RAs are able to use those funds to do some really cool things (oftentimes with really good food). Some programs are for fellowship and fun (i.e. a building bubble soccer tournament), some are opportunities to learn a new skill (i.e. sewing rice bag heat packs), some help to teach you more about what our campus has to offer or basic lessons on campus tools (i.e. a session with the entertainment offerings at the library or a practical lesson on how to schedule your classes for next semester). Overall, RAs do their best to plan programs that are fun and beneficial.

Administrative Roles

Perhaps what you may hear most about RAs from other schools is that they enforce school policy. This is true of Grove City College RAs as well. RAs are trained to uphold community standards and confront policy violations in a loving way, and will work with students to help them to understand the purpose or reason behind a particular policy.

Similarly, there is an RA “on duty” in each residence hall from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every night and all day on Saturdays and Sundays.  This means that there is always an RA present in your residence hall during these times as a resource to residents in many ways – mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically (in cases of illness and/or injury or in cases of facility concerns). Contact information for the RA “on duty” is located on every hall within the building, and within most of the residence hall lobbies.

Simply put, your RA is a resource.

RAs are students just like you, and they are in a great position to support you through the school year and beyond. Your RA will likely be a helpful resource for you, and will quite possibly become a good friend to you.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

It’s a Suite Life: Community vs Suite-Style Bathrooms

I am a senior at Grove City College and over the past four years I have lived in three of our five main female residence halls. Freshman year I lived in Mary Anderson Pew (MAP) North, as most freshman women do. Sophomore and junior years I lived in MAP South, and this year I am living in MAP West. South and West are both suite-style residence halls, meaning that most of the rooms in these buildings are attached to one other room with a bathroom in the middle. North has community style bathrooms.

I have loved my experiences in both of my suite-style rooms as well as with community bathrooms. I have no clear-cut preference between the two, as they have both been very different and yet great experiences.

Pros of Suite Bathrooms:

  1. Convenience

There is no getting around it, suite-style bathrooms are convenient. Midnight bathroom trips are easy and I am back in bed before I am even fully awake, and being able to carry on a conversation with my roommate while I do dishes or fill our water pitcher is awesome.

2. Privacy

This one is kind of tricky. Yes, there is slightly more privacy in suite bathrooms, but I am still sharing with 2-5 other people, so it is not uncommon that more than one person will be in the bathroom at one time. Grove City College suite bathrooms are unique and nice in the respect that the toilets are still enclosed in stalls, so someone can be in the stall while someone else is in the shower with no problem whatsoever.

3. Bonus Friends

Suite-mates are your bonus roommates. You will likely see them more often than many other people on the hall, since you are sharing a bathroom, and brushing your teeth at the same time everyday allows a certain kind of bond to develop. Suite-mate relationships come in many different forms – some people become best friends, and some people remain friendly acquaintances, but there is always a unique relationship between suite-mates.

Pros of Community Bathrooms

  1. Bonus Friends

Similar to suite bathrooms, the people who you meet in your community bathrooms can become your best friends. Community bathrooms present the unique opportunity to chat with people who you otherwise would never even meet and develop close friendships while you are performing your normal bathroom routines. Before college I never would have thought of the bathroom as a social place, but since leaving the community bathrooms I have really missed meeting new people while doing makeup or doing dishes.

2. No Clashing Schedules

In community bathrooms you don’t have to coordinate with suite-mates and roommates for who is going to shower when. In an entire year of living on a community bathroom hall I only had to wait for a shower once, and that was after a particularly sweaty FitWell (physical education) ended for the day. You can blow dry your hair before your 8 a.m. class without angering a roommate who’s still sleeping, and flushing the toilet at 2:30 a.m. is not going to wake anybody up.

3. Cleaned for You

Community bathrooms are cleaned by the housekeeping staff here at the college throughout the week. I never quite figured out their cleaning schedule, but they did some form of light cleaning in our community bathrooms nearly every day of the week and did a deep clean one or two times a week. I never felt like the bathroom was dirty, and I didn’t have to schedule in time to clean it myself.

Cons of Suite Bathrooms

  1. Cleaning

This is only a minor con. Students in suite-style rooms that have only two rooms attached to a bathroom (so mostly only the women’s suite-style rooms) are responsible for cleaning their own bathrooms. The school provides all of the cleaning supplies that we need for us, so we just need to worry about actually using them. There are many ways to work out a cleaning schedule with suite-mates and roommates, but this year my suite decided that each room would take turns cleaning the bathroom once a week, and it has been working well for us.

2. Schedule Conflicts

My roommate, suite-mates, and myself all have similar nighttime and morning schedules. This is a large part of what makes my roommate and me, in particular, able to share a room. This generally means, however, that several of us are using the bathroom at similar times, which is no big deal when it comes to brushing teeth or washing faces, since there are two sinks in our bathroom, but it is not unusual that we all take showers back to back and would probably take showers at the same time in a community bathroom. The proximity of the bathroom to our sleeping quarters also can be an issue when one of us is getting ready for a morning class while the others are still sleeping – it usually means avoiding having to blow-dry our hair before 8 a.m. and being very careful of not shining light in our roommates’ eyes when entering and exiting the bathroom.

3. Less Spontaneity

I love talking to people and I love spending time with the women on my hall. This is significantly easier to do in halls with community bathrooms for obvious reasons. People have to be much more intentional about opening their doors or interacting with the people they live around in suite-style halls than they would in community halls.

Cons of Community Bathrooms

  1. Less Privacy

You are rarely alone in a community bathroom, which can be fun from a social aspect, but there are definitely times when you just do not want to interact with anyone and community bathrooms can make that a difficult thing to do. Community bathrooms do have double curtains in front of the showers, which means that walking around in nothing but a towel is not a necessity (though, our single-gender residence halls make that an option for those who prefer that).

2. Hand soap

This could just as easily be a pro of community bathrooms. Hand soap is provided for you in community bathrooms (paper towels are provided for both community and suite bathrooms). While this is certainly more convenient, I personally get really excited about seasonally scented hand soaps and have loved getting to choose my own for my suite bathroom. Sometimes people will put fun soaps in community bathrooms, but it gets used a lot faster than it otherwise would.

3. Bring Your Towel

(I am kind of grasping at straws at this point…I love community style bathrooms!)

In community bathrooms you have to remember to bring your towel from your room to the bathroom. You actually do not necessarily have to carry your toiletries to the bathroom, because the residence hall bathrooms at Grove City College all have shelves for students to leave their shower caddies in the bathroom, which is very convenient.

So there you have it!  Both community bathrooms and suite-style bathrooms have their pros and their cons, but you are able to have a great experience in either one!  If given the option, I would recommend living in a place with community bathrooms for your first year at college in order to have more opportunities to meet people and to avoid unnecessary conflicts with roommates and suite-mates about the bathroom, and then consider living in a suite-style bathroom in your later years of college if you so desire.