College/university attendees: Did/do you live in a dorm?

[NewWaveChick1981]

Lived in a dorm my first two years at UNC-CH. I lived in a coed dorm on a coed floor. Our end of the hall was female, the two middle sections were male, and the other end female. My room was right next door to the guys' section. I saw all kinds of interesting things (like guys running across the hall to the shower with nothing but a smile on :evilgrin:). We had a 2 AM visitation cutoff, but nobody (even the RAs on the floors) paid any atttention to it. I would not have traded that experience for anything (except for, maybe, AC :) ). :D That was 1981-1983.

Tell me about your dorm experiences! :D

[Mutley]

1. I lived in the dorm for my first two years as well.

The first year, I lived in the Residence Tower. I shared a little tiny room with this other girl. Somehow we managed to end up on the alcohol free floor. :o We didn't pay much attention to that, though. :P It was coed, too. :evilgrin:

The second year, I lived in Towson Run -- on campus apartments. I shared a four bedroom apartment with seven other female students. One bathroom. :grr: The floors were coed, but the apartments were not. Since they were only open to students 20 and older, there weren't any rules beyond state and federal law. :P

[NewWaveChick1981]

5. Yeah, coed was great, wasn't it?

:evilgrin: It does suck that seven people had to share one bathroom. We had two shower stalls, four toilets, and four sinks for eight women at our end of the hall, so it wasn't bad at all. There was also a urinal because it used to be an all-male dorm. :P We just kept potted plants in there. :rofl:

[ThomCat]

7. If you'd left the Urinal free the bathroom might have become

co-ed.

In my dorm, the bathrooms became co-ed after midnight. They showers were in an open room with tiny curtains separating the showers. So when someone decided to take a midnight shower, it was even odds which bathroom they'd choose and it was very easy for everyone else to get a decent view.

Running commentary was not unusual.

[NewWaveChick1981]

10. ROFL!

Our bathrooms were not really coed, but it happened at times. I wouldn't be surprised if the potted plants got wet from something other than regular water.... :rofl:

As far as the running commentary, that's too funny! :rofl: The way our bathroom was positioned, the frosted window faced the hall window from another dorm right beside it. We had to keep the window partially open to get the steam out, and some of the guys from the other dorm figured out that if they stood at the right angle, they could see into our bathroom. I was brushing my teeth one night, and my roommate was taking a shower. When my roomie opened the stall curtain, I just happened to look up, and there were about twelve guys standing there in their window like meerkats. My roommate screamed, and I started laughing and put the window up completely. The guys scattered, but I knew who most of them were and gave them total hell about it the next day. My roomie started laughing after her initial shock and wasn't too upset. :rofl: I'm sure they had some running commentary of their own.... :evilgrin:

[StrongBad]

2. Lived in a dorm my freshman year

It was probably one of the most educational and enjoyable experiences of my life. My college was very diverse so I got to share a living space with people of all cultures. Being a middle-class suburban white kid who had no experience with people outside my own culture, I found this invaluable.

Plus, it was at times just so much damn fun. I miss it and you've caused me to become nostalgic :)

[NewWaveChick1981]

11. Glad I could bring back pleasant memories!

Yeah, sometimes I think dorm life is the way it should be forever. :P

[taterguy]

3. the firedrills were annoying and amusing

I lived on the 8th floor of a 10 floor dorm at UNC. Everytime someone burned some toast we'd all have to evacuate, no matter what time it was or what the weather was. The fun part was 1,000 kids in the court yard all chanting: The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't need no water let the mother fucker burn. Burn mother fucker burn.

[NewWaveChick1981]

8. That must have been either Ehringhaus, Morrison, or

Hinton James. :P I lived in Winston. Fire drills really sucked, and I can just imagine how much of a pain in the ass it was in a high-rise. :grr: :mad: My sophomore year, I was in the shower about 8:30 AM getting ready for class one day, and the fire alarm went off. I paid no attention to it because we'd had so many fire drills in recent days that I was sick of it. My hair was full of shampoo, and the RA came running into the bathroom yelling, "There really is a fire! Get out!" With my head full of suds, I grabbed my robe and put my hair in a towel quickly. I was on the second floor, and when I got outside, there was smoke billowing out of the basement. Turns out it was an electrical fire. It didn't do much damage, but I had to stand outside like that for an hour. OF COURSE the Daily Tarheel had to be there taking pictures, and there I was on the front page the next day, head wrapped in a towel with suds coming out underneath. The other people in the dorm were in various stages of dress---one guy just had time to throw his underwear on, and one guy was just in a robe with nothing on underneath. :P Ah, those were the days... :rofl:

[bigwillq]

4. Lived in a dorm for my first semester

Then I transferred to another school and commuted.

[NewWaveChick1981]

12. Cool!

Our school required us to live in a dorm our freshman year. I chose to live in it my second year, but by my junior year, I was ready for some privacy. :)

[billyskank]

6. In the first year and for most of the third year

In the first year I lived on the ground floor, which was boys only, although the girls were not far away (just up one flight of stairs). I never saw any of that kind of action though, the hi jinks I got up to all involved alcohol and weed, an awful lot of which was smoked towards the end of the first year. The best jape we played was probably the night when we stole through all the kitchens and dyed everybody's milk blue. We did our own too, we weren't that dumb. :) This was 1994-1995.

In the third year they put me on the first floor which was mixed, but the first year girls and I pretty much held each other in contempt. I was almost glad when I got kicked out for smoking grass in my room... ;) The university had very much tightened up its vigilance on the evil weed by this time. :( After that I went and stayed at one of my friends' house. This was the academic year 1996-1997.

[NewWaveChick1981]

14. You still had some fun, though!

There was a lot of drinking and smoking of various substances in my dorm too. The legal drinking age for beer and wine at that time was 18 (harder stuff was 21), so it wasn't unusual for freshmen to go out and get drunk on Franklin St. and then stumble back to smoke pot. :rofl:

[billyskank]

19. Sadly there were no new wave chicks

:hug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

21. Not even any with green hair and/or funky clothes?

:( :hug:

[billyskank]

23. All we had were goths

and they're not much fun. ;)

*smooch* :*

[NewWaveChick1981]

24. Goths are so morose...

New Wave is so much more upbeat! :D

[billyskank]

26. ...

and sexy :blush:

[eyesroll]

9. I lived in dorm all four years at a small liberal arts school.

You think coed dorms are interesting?
Try coed bathrooms. Floors could vote on whether their bathrooms should be single-sex or coed. Most conservative vote won -- if one person wanted single-sex bathrooms, they became single-sex (or, sometimes, one bathroom would be single-sex and one bathroom would become co-ed, if one woman wanted single-sex but the men didn't care).

Needless to say, we didn't have visitation rules (just "be courteous if you have a roommate"), and alcohol laws were enforced on a "don't make me come in there" basis. If you were 21 and doing something dumb because you were drunk, you'd be disciplined (arrested, ticketed, fined -- whatever the penalty was for doing that dumb thing). If you were 19 and doing something dumb because you were drunk, you'd get disciplined for underage drinking AND for that dumb thing. But if you were drinking peacefully, nobody would bother you. (Hell, if you were doing drugs peacefully, nobody would bother you -- one of the security guards might keep using the words "acid" and "trip" in sentences to freak you out, though, which happened to someone I was "babysitting").

[NewWaveChick1981]

15. Sounds like a lot of liberal arts colleges.

I was the Director of Financial Aid at a small women's college for seven years, and as an administrator, I heard about all the goings-on in the dorms. Because it was all female, any male in the dorm was subject to scrutiny after visitation hours. The last year I was there, though, the students voted on 24-hour visitation, so it really didn't matter much at that point. None of the dorm bathrooms were anything but women's bathrooms, though, so I heard a lot of stories about that. :P

[eyesroll]

25. Y'know...I enjoyed my dorm experience, but there is no amount you could

pay me to do it again.

My mom asked if there were law-student dorms at Marquette. There aren't, and if there were, why would I want a living space where visitation hours would be enforced (it's a Catholic school and I have a shacker-upper), kids would be prohibited (my shacker-upper has a daughter) and I'd have to find a new place to live each summer?

[NewWaveChick1981]

27. I totally agree. It's really a lot of fun when you're 18 or 19, but

when you've already established yourself as an adult, why would you want to go back? I wouldn't do it now either, but at 18 and 19, I wouldn't have missed it. :D

[YellowRubberDuckie]

13. Lived in the Dorms all thru college...

I loved it. I had a great time. I wreaked some havoc and tortured some girly girls. It was great. They still don't know who was doing it to this day. I made a lot of stupid girls think that they were going crazy.
Duckie

[NewWaveChick1981]

17. ROFL!

:rofl: And just how did you torture those poor girly-girls? :P

[YellowRubberDuckie]

28. They were constantly in the bathrooms.

So, while they were in the shower, we'd take soap, put it back in their rooms so they thought they just didn't bring it in, even though they probably had already used it, took shampoo, toothbrushes. It is hilarious how no one ever locked their doors. We'd pop in to their room and rearrange stuff. one weekend, these two especially snotty girls left town and didn't lock their door. We worked all night and switched their sides. We had a polaroid. We took pictures of where they had everything and just switched their stuff around. They were so confused when they got back. We laughed so hard. One girl had a bad habit of leaving her stuff on the sink and then using the toilet. We'd always grab it and throw it back on her bed before she was done. She never figured out that it was. I could go on and on.
Duckie

[NewWaveChick1981]

30. OMG, that's hilarious!

:rofl: Confusing ditzy girls is usually good for laughs! :rofl: :applause: I know of a couple of girls in our dorm that could have benefitted from such gaslighting..... :P

[datasuspect]

16. no dorms

always had my own crib

[NewWaveChick1981]

18. So did my husband.

He commuted into campus. Actually, he transferred in from another school where he lived at home, but he got an apt. his junior year when he transferred.

[datasuspect]

20. even though i was the same age as other students

they just seemed . . . too young.

too much drama and ruckus in that environment.

[NewWaveChick1981]

22. My husband said the same thing.

He dated a girl his freshman year (before I met him) who lived in a dorm, and he couldn't stand visiting her there because of the noise. Our dorms had to be quiet after 11 PM and before 7 AM, but other than that, anything went.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

29. Yes I did and it was the best few years of my life

I actually didn't have to move into a residence hall because we lived quite close to the university but I decided that I would like to and I never regretted it for a second. I loved the independence, the freedom, the ability to attend residential hall parties, the advantage of living close to campus and having easy access to the library and other university facilities (which was excellent for research for assignment purposes as well as for participating in on-campus life). Living in the residence hall gave me a social life I never would have had if I had stayed at home but yet it also gave me peaceful solitude and quiet when I needed it (we had our own rooms in the residential hall)

Honestly words cannot even begin to describe how happy those years were. And how much I miss them.

[NewWaveChick1981]

31. I'm glad they were so good for you, SD!

:hug: I'm also glad you had your own room---I had to share, but my roommate was my best high school friend, so we didn't have to worry too much.

[TimeChaser]

32. Yep, I live in a coed dorm most of the year

It's the honors dorm, so there's less unbearably loud music on weeknights. We have quads with two little bedrooms with two beds each, a main room with desks for the computers, and a bathroom with it's own shower. I didn't like my roommates very much last year (freshman year). They liked to party a little too much for my geeky anti-social self. Plus, there was that night when the roommate who shared my side of the dorm got so drunk that she puked in her bed :banghead:. And the one roommate who broke up and got back together with the same guy four times...

So this year, I've gotten together with several friends I made last year and we're all rooming together. It should be more fun... and I think we're going to scare the people around us with our weird geeky ways. I go back to school in about two weeks :D

[NewWaveChick1981]

48. Cool! Glad you and your friends will make things

bearable for each other. :D It helps.

[LadyoftheRabbits]

33. I lived/ will live

in a coed dorm. It's pretty interesting... my entire high school never had so much raging hormones as that dorm. I like having guys there, too, seeing as they always find a way to make things interesting on a boring night :D We have no visitation rules, which could be a good or bad thing... I'm betting it's the former. I have indeed seen a streaker, but that wasn't at my dorm, which was a little too goody goody for that.

[NewWaveChick1981]

49. You're right about the raging hormones thing....

:rofl: :hi:

[AngryAmish]

34. Never lived in a dorm

Hated them

[NewWaveChick1981]

50. I can see why that would happen.

Dorms aren't for everyone. I enjoyed living in one until just before my junior year, when the noise and lack of privacy started getting old. That's why I moved off campus for the rest of the time I was in college.

[hedgehog]

35. My daughter takes the prize for worst roomates ever.

Freshman year, her roommate was angry because she had wanted to go to a different school. She literally did not speak one word to my daughter all year, but she did manage to go out drinking so that she came back and barfed all over the floor.

Sophmore year, the roommate had a boy friend who moved in with them. The pair slept in the bottom bunk; my daughter had the top bunk. The school didn't care because the male student was paying for a dorm room on the next floor.

My duaghter didn't want to rock the boat, so she put up with this crap. I still think she would have done a lot better in school if she had had a decent place to live.

[NewWaveChick1981]

51. Geez, that stinks.

I've known people who had cruddy roommates, and I saw a lot of that when I was a college adminstrator. I'm sorry she had to put up with that!

[BreweryYardRat]

36. Freshman year sucked.

Hopefully this year will be better.

[NewWaveChick1981]

52. For your sake, I hope so too!

:hug:

[BreweryYardRat]

79. I think/hope I got better roomies this year.

Last year I shared a suite with:

One sports fanatic, who was a pretty cool guy despite spending most of his time in his room. Just never wanted to go do much, but he'd let me use his TV when he was out working, so I can't complain about him.

One ROTC cadet, who was a total neat freak (I'm a slob of the highest order), and mentally damaged in some of the same ways I am (sociopathy), but more so. I'm not comfortable around anyone crazier than I am, and even less when they leave passive-aggressive little notes about cleanliness...and post a used rifle target on the fridge.

Two fratboys (one moved out during second semester and was replaced by the other), the first of whom was also a neat freak. #2 was a pretty cool guy, but I never really got to know him.

[ForrestGump]

37. Nope

Where I first went to university, access to dorms was prioritized by the results of national examinations (the tests were meant for other purposes, but they spun the whole dorm thing off them, as well). In my final year of high school, I got the highest possible score in two subjects, handily placing me in the nation's academic élite, and aced the other exams, too...but I didn't get into a dorm and watched my less exam-successful peers go, instead (this would turn out to be foreshadowing for the lack of local recognition that was a feature of my PhD work, in a way). So I lived by myself for the first year and I spent a fair bit of time visiting high-school friends at various dorms (also ran across my best friend from ten years before, which was quite a stunning event for someone my age, realizing it'd been more than half my life since I'd seen him).

I didn't feel like I was missing much because I had absolute personal freedom and, besides, I've always been essentially asocial in some ways and liked it that way...I could go hang out with my friends and meet new people on my terms and then walk away and not have to live with them or the rules of the dorms. I got lonely sometimes, not least in the way that I wished I had a girlfriend (shoot...got used to that, it being the motif of most of my life), but I could control that by going to visit one of my up-all-night buddies and their friends and just hanging out with them. It wasn't 'til the next year, anyway, that my heart got well and truly shattered for the first time in my life (so badly that my almost dying in the only motorcycle crashes I've ever had was hardly a surprise) and I ended that year by taking the following year off and going overseas to work it all out in myself through seat-of-the-pants travel.

I have no idea how I fell between the cracks as I did, in terms of admission, but I was happy enough that I did. In my home country, universities didn't treat students as kids, as US schools tend to, but the dorms did so to some extent -- not the libertarian ideal, anyway, and I guess it's inevitable in that you've got all these different people with high energies who have to somehow coexist in some approximation of harmony.

In subsequent years at that university I lived in roommate situations in rented houses or apartments. For the most part, I liked that even though it was considerably less hermitic an existence.

[NewWaveChick1981]

53. That's definitely a different take on university life.

I've learned lots of things by working in academe for over 20 years, and I've always wanted to attend classes in another country's university system. I'm sure many things are the same, but there are key differences. :)

I'm glad it ultimately worked out so well for you! :D

[ForrestGump]

58. Very different, and not just

in the obvious outward structure of degree programs and class schedules.

Kinda got the best/worst of both worlds by doing degrees there and here. :hi:

[ZombieNixon]

38. Yes. It's bloody nice and really expensive, but yeah, it's a dorm.

The managers are assholes and one of them has it in for me, so I take unique pleasure in thwarting her plans. :evilgrin:

I have been privy to (though not guilty of) the setting off of a fire extinguisher in the elevator and the punching of a human-sized hole in the wall. :o

Edit: Oh, yeah, it's co-ed, of course. And one night I got a little drunk and woke up at 1:30 in the morning in the TV lounge wearing nothing but a pair of track pant. I must have been half awake and walked out of my room without my key. All I can say is thank God it was chilly enough that I decided not to sleep nekkid that night. :evilgrin: :scared:

[NewWaveChick1981]

54. LOL! So YOU'RE the guy that keeps harrassing...

...managers. :rofl: Although I never worked in student housing, I heard all kinds of true stories about "your kind." :rofl:

And if you HAD ended up nekkid in the TV lounge, you wouldn't be the first. :P

[malta blue]

39. I lived in the dorms

coed all four years. I also saw the guys streaking to the showers.

We did not have any visitation rules. Anyhow, my favorite pasttime was to yell out my window (which overlooked frat house row) and yell at people "Where did you sleep last night?"

:rofl:

[NewWaveChick1981]

55. Frat Row was well away from where our dorms were

(and still are), but I can just imagine being able to yell stuff at them after a partying night....:rofl:

[malta blue]

57. You should have seen them jump when I yelled

at the top of my lungs. Some would run for cover, others flipped me the bird...either way, it was amusing to say the least.

[NewWaveChick1981]

59. I'll bet! ROFL!

:rofl: Throwing things at them would also have been fun.... :P

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

40. Yes. Loved it.

Our room was in the "old" wing of the dorm, with really high ceilings and hardwood floors

Near the end of my desire to reside on-campus, I was able to get a single room,
so it was kind of like an apartment with a shared bathroom.

I met a lot of friends in ol' Shoe. (Shoemaker Hall) I still know a lot of them, too.

[NewWaveChick1981]

56. Single room! Lucky!

:hi: The only time people got single rooms where I went to school was when they paid a whole lot extra for them. There were something like two single rooms per dorm, so they were scarce too.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

70. I did have to pay...

But it was only a little bit extra (Maybe $100 a semester). And I'd been there for long enough that I was near
the top of the list credit-wise so I always qualified for a single room when I decided I wanted one.

Man, that was fun.

[Nikia]

76. Our school had a housing lottery

With seniors getting first preference. Seniors could generally get a single room if they wanted, along with most juniors and an occaisional sophomore, in the least desirable rooms.

[alarimer]

41. I lived in a dorm all four years

I had a full ride scholarship so it didn't make any sense to pay extra for an apartment, even though I hated the dorms. I did pay extra (maybe $100 a quarter) to live alone so I almost never had a roommate. Thankfully. One of the ones I did have was a complete fundy. Of course I went to school in deep south Alabma so there were a lot of fundies. I suspect that if I had gone to a bigger school (Like Auburn or the University of Alabama) I would have found more diversity in the student body.

The dorm was all female and there were VISITING HOURS for men. You had to sign them in and out and you would catch hell if they were caught there after hours. Like rules from the 50s in 1987! The plus side is that it was usually quieter than the co-ed dorm.

[NewWaveChick1981]

60. You gotta watch the fundies...

I saw a lot of fundies go to either the fundie exreme or go completely and totally wild. :yoiks:

[Haole Girl]

42. Coed for just 1 year...soph

Yes, the river flowed right by my door! Since I didn't grow up with any brothers (just sisters), I just got the biggest thrill out of the guys parading by our door with nothing but a towel on! Ahhh...the memories.

I had to move out, to save money, and live in a 6 room house with about 10 people. But, I remember my grades improved greatly! ;-)

[NewWaveChick1981]

61. Yeah, coed CAN be kinda distracting...

The guys in just towels... the guys who forgot their soap running back across the hall to the shower, thinking nobody is watching when they streak back to the bathroom, then girls like me opening their doors suddenly (but never on purpose O8))... And the ones that come back in from working out wearing nothing but tight gym shorts.... :9 I have a brother, but just let me say the view in a coed dorm can be very intriguing.... :rofl:

[tjwmason]

43. Yes - 1st and 3rd years.

I was in a private rented flat in 2nd and 4th.

The actual Hall of Residence was mixed, but it was built in a number of separate blocks, each of which held 48 people and was single-sex. The rooms were on small landings with 4 rooms plus shower and lavatory so it was pretty quiet.

The local folklore was that the building had been designed by an architect who specialised in Swedish mental asyla. It has since been redeveloped, so it will never get a blue-plaque on it. :(

[ThomCat]

44. The architechural firm that designed the dorms

at my university also designed prisons, and openly reused the basic design for a minimum security prison for at least one of our dorm complexes.

The university had two campuses, and one of them is well known as a former public insane asylum. The county's "Potter's Field" used to be where the main quad is now. We were told that all those unknown, unmarked graves were removed before the campus was built, but what are the odds of that?

[NewWaveChick1981]

62. Wow! Swedish mental asyla?

:yoiks: Kind of like the same people who design prisons and dorms.... They have a lot of the same features. :P

[idgiehkt]

45. yes. I lived in one.

not coed, but might as well have been. Don't remember very much about those two years that I did, it's kind of a blur. It kind of scares me looking back at it; I was in the basement level my last year and once a girl told me that she had snuck a guy in through my window one night while I was passed out drunk on my bed. I never had a clue.

[NewWaveChick1981]

63. Wow!

I think a lot of folks have similar dorm experiences. :rofl:

[momophile]

46. Never did, always wanted to. Feel like I missed something.

I went to junior college first, so I didn't do the dorm thing. When I was in high school I fantacized about living in a dorm in college. Even stole a Toys-R-Us cart so that I could take it to college with me. Never happened. Now I feel like I missed out. I don't have any friends from undergrad and never really did.

[NewWaveChick1981]

65. Dorms can be a lot of fun, but they can also be loud and

obnoxious. My husband never lived in the dorms, and he sort of regrets it, but he's glad he actually got sleep and study time. :hi:

[KamaAina]

47. I most certainly did not!

Yale does not have "dorms". We have 12 residential colleges, each of which comes complete with its own dean, master, coat of arms, small theatre ("dramat"), computer lab, dining hall, intramural sports teams, College Seminars which are a means to teach courses outside the official curriculum, and, um, a dorm.

I was in Saybrook College (it's the one along the south side of Elm Street):



Beware the Saybrugian!

[NewWaveChick1981]

66. I stand corrected!

My university did not have residential colleges, but I'm fascinated by the ones that do. :) I'd always heard great things about Yale's residential colleges! Nice to meet someone who knows what they're all about! :hi:

[Reverend_Smitty]

64. I did for my first 2 years

It was fun for the most part, all the dorms at my school were co-ed but the two buildings that I lived in had suites set up so you shared a bathroom with members of the same sex. Other than the cramped quarters and the 3am fire drills, it was a good time.

My last 2 years of college were spent at on-campus apartments...that my friends, is where the real parties are at!

[NewWaveChick1981]

67. You did the same thing I did.

And yes, off-campus parties are much better... :hi:

[Reverend_Smitty]

68. the lack of "quiet hours" and no RA supervision

is in the words of Martha Stewart...A good thing :P

[mikeytherat]

69. Freshman year only, some of what we did:

Used plexiglas and silicon sealant to create a pool inside the showers - four feet deep in a 20' X 20' room

Set my roomie's Mesa Boogie amp on "4" (stage volume was "3" on the master vol), placed it in the closet, and rolled the dickheads next door out of bed with one chord. At 3:00 a.m.

Found out how many times you could run with a 120 min. cassette tape through the hall, up the stairs, across the second floor, and back (3.5 times).

Listened, in horror, as the guys at the end of the hall (whose dad owned a local pharmacy) played baseball in the hallway with hundreds of packets of expired condoms and various even-more-expired food items. My God, the mess it made.

mikey_the_rat

[Zomby Woof]

71. Yes

For my last two years of college, which was too far from home to commute.

It was mostly a positive experience, especially when I had my own room, which was for the entire first quarter, and most of my second quarter of my first year there. Of the three roommates I had, one was a good friend of mine before we lived together, and since we had similar music tastes, study habits, and played guitar, we got along great. We roomed for a complete quarter together to finish my first year.

But the chain smoker who woke up 3 or 4 times a night (even though I requested a non-smoking roomie) for his smoke made that the longest two weeks to finish a quarter I had (due to the campus housing shortage, they had set us up with temp roomies as they relocated us out of temp housing). Luckily, that nightmare did not affect my exam scores, and it was followed by the great experience above.

At the beginning of my second year there, I had a Costa Rican exchange student as my roomie, also for two long weeks before getting my own room for the rest of the year. He was a nice guy, but his study habits were a bit overachieving and rude by my standards. He wasn't satisfied with his desk lamp when staying up until 1AM on a school night - he had to keep the VERY BRIGHT overhead flourescent light on too. I tried nicely negotiating with him, but his English skills mysteriously weakened when doing so. It wasn't all bad - his best friend from Costa Rica was the roomie of the guy who became my best friend, whom I may have never met otherwise.

Sure was glad I got my own room again. It was in the former medical wing from long ago, and I had one of those cool beds which could be cranked up and elevated. Only had to share a bathroom with one other guy two doors down. They kept the room between us vacant because the permanently sealed doors between the rooms were gapped pretty good above the floor and didn't hide sound well. We never had any problems and got along great the few times we socialized. I threw some good parties in that room, and got the best grades of my college career. :D

[femmocrat]

72. We didn't have coed dorms.

I lived in a huge dorm my freshman year-- It was an old hotel which had been converted to a dorm. There were 4 girls to a room using 2 sets of bunk beds. Of course we did not get along. The best thing was having our own bath. Sophomore year I lucked into an upperclass dorm and loved it. There were four girls to a suite of two rooms and a bath. Three of us pledged the same sorority and then got an apartment our junior year. Senior year, I got married and had a cute apartment, but a long commute. I missed campus life and wished I would have waited to get married after I graduated.

[Fox Mulder]

73. I lived in a dorm on a coed floor my freshman year.

In 2001. Then I lived in the coed on-campus apartments for my remaining time in school.

[Nikia]

74. All 4 years

My first 2 years I had a roommate. My last two years, I got a single room. All the dorms that I lived in were coed but had single sexed floors. There were no prohibitions on visitation . My husband and I visited a lot especially when I had a sinlge room. I loved my little dorm room.

[fujiyama]

75. No I didn't

At times, it's something I regret. It likely would have been an interesting experience.

But I eventually did transfer out of my original college (which was totally commuter based and had no social scene whatsoever), drifted around for a while, and went to a different university where I made some great friends. So I'd say for the most part it worked out OK.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

77. Oh yeah

the dorms. All four years. No real co-ed though. This WAS the sixties.
Did live in a girl's dorm that was connected to a boy's by shared lounge, cafeteria, basement laundry/lounge/snack bar. After I graduated and was hanging around trying to figure out my next move, I lived in an off-campus dorm that was set up the same way except with 2 swimming pools, much better food, semi-private bathrooms and maid service.

[Arugula Latte]

78. First two years, yes.

I loved it freshman year (crazy times), but the vibe wasn't quite the same the next year, and I felt a little melancholy about that.

Best thing: spectacular views of San Francisco to the west (bridges, fog rolling in, sunset over Pacific ... *sigh*) and of the Berkeley campus to the east.

I remember massive waterfights freshman year and kissing my first serious boyfriend in the dorm stairwell. Also icky cafeteria food.

One night, some idiot threw a refrigerator off a high-up floor ... Got expelled.