The benefits of living off-campus are numerous. Even when factoring in the added responsibility of looking after a house or apartment, living off-campus allows a lot more freedom that eases the stress of senior year at Augustana.
While the dorm experience is beneficial for underclassmen years at Augustana, I have never regretted moving off-campus for my senior year.
The biggest negative for many people is the fact that living off-campus, especially in a house, requires a lot of maintenance. Bathrooms are not magically cleaned and restocked every few days. Unless you can handle a dirty space, scrubbing the toilets, showers and sinks is up to you and your roommates. Kitchens are the same story: if you don't do the dishes, they will simply stay in the sink, dirty. If you rent a house, snow removal and lawn maintenance are up to you, unless you have an extremely generous landlord.
While maintaining a clean area can be time-consuming and leave you longing for a maintenance team, it prepares you for the responsibilities that come after graduating college. This is your chance to get used to paying monthly rent, setting up utility services and paying the bills, as well as navigating life with roommates when problems aren't solved by moving dorm rooms or getting the peer advisor involved.
No meal plan (or a reduced plan) means intense grocery shopping and learning to prepare your own meals. Catastrophes such as leaky ceilings, broken plumbing, clogged sinks or infestations require learning quick fixes, or knowing when to throw in the towel and call the landlord.
While it can be stressful, the payoff is that you are that much more prepared to deal with these challenges when they inevitably occur after graduation.
The biggest pro to living off-campus is increased autonomy and personal responsibility. There is nobody babysitting you to ensure that you follow the dorm rules.
If you are 21, you may drink in your home as you please. You can have opposite- sex friends over whenever you like, blast the music at any time, and there are rarely lines to the shower in the morning. You don't need a parking permit and there aren't going to be people screaming down the hallway at all times of the day, and you don't have to deal with people that you don't care to be living near.
The space is yours to decorate—being in rooms that you've painted and filled with your own furniture makes you much happier than being in an industrial dorm room. Common spaces are personalized and full of life.
What I like the most is the bonding that occurs with the girls I live with. There are few secrets crammed into a house like we are, so we're there to celebrate for each other during good times, and we're a support system for the tragic times.
We don't need to walk between buildings or knock on doors. We can come together in the living room, sigh, and settle down on a couch after a long day to chat with close friends and have some fun together.
Living together in this house, I've felt closer to people than I ever did living on campus. I'm much happier living with a smaller group of friends than living right on campus. Anyone ready to take another step toward living in the real world should consider taking advantage of living off-campus.
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