G to the hetto

At breakfast this morning, I was sitting near some RA's. They were all talking about the problems they've had with their residents, and I was listening because some of the stories were funny. But then they started talking about how glad they were that they didn't get X Hall this year, it being the worst hall on record. Guess where I live. That's right.

Not only that, but when I came back from breakfast, there was a page-long, single-spaced rant from one of our RA's posted on the hall door. She ripped us all a new one, let me tell you. First was the notification that in one month, our hall had wracked up $400 of damage. She was ashamed to admit that we are her residents, of having to babysit us instead of trying to get an education, of what a nightmare it all was. There was caps and cursing and the whole deal. The last line was "P.S. When you all fail at life, the only thing that I will do is stand and point and laugh. Laugh really, really hard."

I thought my living situation was just the typical Behrend experience. Stepping outside of your room in the morning to find that your whiteboard and Halloween decorations have been torn off your door and your third dry-erase marker is gone. Finding unconscious guys in your hall on a weekday morning, having to wipe the penis drawings off of my whiteboard every so often. Girls shrieking and slamming doors in the wee hours every night of the week, walking into the bathroom to find that someone was sick and missed the toilet. Drunk kids playing tag around your hall at 2 am on a Thursday night, then running outside to scream profanity in everyone's open windows.

Nope, I just got lucky. On one hand, it's comforting to know that Behrend as a whole is not as half as bad as I thought. I mean, if this is worst, then it has to be better everywhere else, and I'm just surrounded by the exceptions. It's also good to know that I'm not crazy, that most people think that what I live with is ridiculous. It's such a relief to know that it isn't in my head, that I'm not stuck-up and snobbish - it really is this bad.

But still, this is where I live. What kind of luck is this? I get in at the end of the day, and I shut my door, but I can't get away. It's constant, it's all around me every second of every day. If I had my car, I could just get off campus for a few hours a week. I could find a park to swing and study at, I could get to the beach, or out for a meal. I don't go home every other weekend because I'm homesick (although I love my family a lot), I go home to get away from all of this for a couple of days.

But, I don't have my car, and I do live in the nightmare hall, and nothing is going to change that. Pretty soon I won't be able to leave every other weekend. So it's time to get creative.