Kids These Days

I haven’t really used this blog for social commentary or ranting about too much. However, after reading this article, I have no choice. Sit back folks, because here comes a good old fashioned rant, a mini-soap box speech if you will.

Perhaps I’m a little biased because I was an RA and lived/worked in a residence hall, complete with roommates, single beds and communal bathrooms, for all four years of college. Yes, I will admit I only had a roommate for a semester and was fortunate enough (because of my 24/7 job) to share a bathroom with only one other person for two years of the four I was in school. I did however, despite my slightly upscale (for the school I was at, anyway) living arrangements, did have to deal with roommate conflicts on a weekly basis, and did for two years share a bathroom with 6-12 other girls.

I think there is a lot to be said about communal living. To me the whole college dorms experience is more than just a right of passage. I think that it is an excellent way for students to learn how to interact, live and work with other people. It teaches patience and cooperation, compromise, etc, etc. All of which will undoubtedly help you once you enter the “real world.” Like I said, I only had a roommate for a semester (when she left school, her spot was never filled, I didn’t opt to have a single room, I just lucked out in that sense), but I did share a room with one of my sisters for all but my last year of high school and a couple summers when I home from college. I’ve experience the whole “roommate” dynamic for a good long time. I’m trying not to a hypocrite in this post.

Roommate conflicts and even floor conflicts became an increasing problem every year that I worked for Residence Life. Talking amongst other RAs, we came to the conclusion that people just don’t know how to live with one another. They grew up with their own rooms, and when they’re suddenly put into an environment where they not only have a roommate, but have to live on a floor with 50 other people, many times the basic, common courtesies just don’t exist or took awhile to establish themselves. Most of the conflicts were resolved, but other times you’d just be left in a state of disbelief. Are people really that incapable of sharing with others? Can people not interact with others on any level?

Of course this doesn’t happen all the time, I was lucky enough to have, as a whole, great floors where the majority of the people got a long. When my residents moved off campus, many of them chose to live with one another. If you can survive in a dorm room with one another, living in an apartment should be no sweat.

But this whole luxury living thing just floors me. For one thing, it’s not setting up very realistic expectations for students once they enter the real world. Few students on getting their first job and moving into that first apartment will be able to find a place with granite counter tops, swimming pools, fire places and designer furniture that is affordable. And if they can find a place like that, hiring some one on top of that to clean the places and even do their laundry is a whole other expense and expectation. Secondly, luxury apartment-like dorms don’t promote community. That’s what I loved most about living in the dorms. Sure, I wanted to pull my hair out sometimes because of the loud music or when people trashed the elevators or lobbies, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. It was hard enough to get community started in our halls because so many kids came for the same town, knew one another in high school and remained in their little social circles. I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been if everyone had their own rooms and bathrooms and never had any reason to come out and social with the rest of the “rooms.”

This is going to make me sound like a bitter senior citizen, and I realize I’m not that far distanced in age from this college population, but I think the youth of today (or at least the ones who can afford to live in luxury dorm rooms and pay people to move their stuff for them and arrive at school in an f-ing limo) have this sense of entitlement they feel they’ve earned simply because they exist.

Maybe it’s the way I was raised, but I feel like you should have to do at least a little bit for what you have in life. I know I certainly haven’t had it hard in my life in any extent, but I can do my own laundry, clean my apartment and do my own grocery shopping. I don’t consider those things to be the tough things about life. If, for whatever reason, laundry, cleaning and groceries are the biggest forms of adversity in your life you must face, well consider yourself the luckiest person on the whole planet, quit whining and remember to separate your colors from your whites; no one wants pink socks. And if someday you can afford to have someone else do all of that for you, great, fantastic, more power to you. If you have to do all those monotonous, mundane chores for yourself at some point in your life, something tells me you won’t be a worse person for it. If anything, you might actually gain something from it.

Thank you.

[gives bow, steps off of soap box, picks up soap box, remembers she has laundry in the washing machine, exits stage left]