The Residence Halls, or dorms, are a place for the students who don’t live in town, or have an apartment.  There are obvious benefits to living close to the school, such as proximity to the school and being surrounded on all sides by fellow students.

Sometimes you get a roommate, which can be a blessing or a curse.  Sometimes you get a super strict RA or a hardly noticeable, laid back one.  Sometimes you get loud, obnoxious dorm-mates, or quiet, friendly ones.

All of this is put into a big bowl and jumbled around.  Each lotto number is revealed through the first week of the semester, and you find out if you’re going to win the jackpot or lose big-time.

After living in the dorms for three years, I have had a rather interesting, but overall enjoyable experience.Unfortunately, it can be bad.

My first year I had a roommate, and we hit it off instantly.  The next two years were fairly stress-free, living alone and even having the same RA.  Nothing too horrible, just the occasional locking myself out of the building and what-not.

But this year started differently.  Right away something seemed amiss.

The dorm I reside in is the Fine Arts Dorm, which includes students who major in Music, TV/Radio, Creative Writing, and Theater.  At the beginning of this year, only about five or six of the people in the dorm were actually involved in the Fine Arts.

It wasn’t until everyone started to meet each other and get acquainted with the area that everything got rather loud.  Literally.

Many nights were filled with echoing laughter, bellowing screams, and banging of doors.  This has continued as the semester progresses, with the new RA commenting and telling the dorm as a whole to stop, but with no real improvement.

There was a night when a group of people migrated in front of my door and camped our there from 1:00 AM to almost 3:00 AM.

It has definitely been a trial of my patience, but what can you do?  Sometimes you get bad dorm years.