Now that first year of university is over and moving out of halls has happened, I'm starting to get excited about moving into a house in September and the novelty of living among so many other people is starting to wear off. Though saying that, I am moving into a house of 9 people come September!
Here are my reasons of things I won't miss:
1. Noise - Thin walls, loud music, noisy voices. Not a fun combo, especially on nights with early starts. But I think our flat did contribute a fair bit to the noise pollution. Ooops.
2. So many doors - it's good for security but makes it very difficult to let someone in and just creates a lot of extra hassle. To get into my room from the entrance, I had to go through six doors in total. A bit excessive there maybe?
3. The Kitchen - In the beginning, the kitchen was so clean and tidy but as people get busy and stop doing their washing up, it just got worse and worse, it didn't help that 4/6 of the flat were very messy so it fell to me and one other to keep it clean. It was pretty frustrating when you've just cleaned the whole kitchen and come back an hour later to find it in the same state it was before. I think people don't really care about halls, cause it doesn't feel the same as a house to them.
4. Overpriced rent - the reason I chose halls was for the experience, for the people and cause it was the standard thing to do in first year. But the rent is sky high when compared to house living. Next year, I will be saving £30 a week on rent and could probably find somewhere even better than that pretty easily.
5. The bins. There was a corridor of bins out back and you had to walk through it to put your rubbish away but it was grim because there would be bags all over the floor and one time, I was wearing flats and my shoe filled up with bin juice. Not so bad though. One time, we also spotted a member of the public relieving his bladder there, classy!
6. Laundry - is expensive in halls. £2.70 for a wash and £1.20 for a dry. No thank you. Especially when clothes horses/drying clothes in rooms was banned. Not cool.
7. Strangers - One time, a strange girl from downstairs ran into our flat stark naked. Another time, the same girl threw a party in our flat and invited 30 strangers to surprise one of her friends, it was so odd. Maybe we just needed to stand our ground a bit better.
8. Fire alarms - We were actually pretty lucky in that our block only had 1 fire alarm the whole year (to my knowledge) but often you would hear grumbling outside and see that the block next door had been made to get out of bed at 3am cause someone had burnt their toast.
9. Everything Breaks! Or floods. My room flooded 4 times in 2nd term. And there was a leak outside my bedroom door too for the majority of the year. Ceiling tiles fell down. Skirting boards fell down. On the first day, we had a meeting with our RA, he sat on a stool and it broke, he sat on a 2nd one, it broke. He sat on a third one. It broke. Fourth time lucky. So we had to make do with two stools between six. Yay halls! One time, the whole courtyard flooded. And then it happened again.... See a pattern here?
10. Maintenance - The issues mentioned above wouldn't have been so bad if they were fixed quickly but it always took them a week to respond and then a few tries to get it right. Perfect!
Did you live in halls? Do you agree with this list? Have any additions?
Ellie
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