Sushannah's Blog

Posted By ss1366 on May 2, 2012

Yesterday was my final day of undergraduate classes.

It hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I’m about to graduate, but it’s true. The last four years have flown passed me and now I get to go out and do something new. I at least recognized that fact enough to celebrate a little once my last class finished. One of my friends, Ana, didn’t realize until about an hour after her last class when I have her a celebratory high five. She didn’t quite understand why I did it at first, but after a second, the fact that she was done with undergraduate classes forever sunk in, and she was literally jumping for joy.

Today is Reading Day, the day the college gives us to rest our brains, study, and enjoy Duct Tape Wars before finals begin tomorrow. I only have two finals, and one of them is going to be a breeze, but I still have to complete my senior portfolio which is pretty stressful. But, I’m still very excited to be so close to finishing my college degree that I’m not too worried about it. In just a few days, it’ll be all over and then I can enjoy the rest of the week hanging out with my friends and pretending that we don’t have to enter the real world in just a few short days.

Everyone keeps asking me what I’m going to do after college, and I have to say, I honestly don’t know. I was trying to get a job in publishing, but there aren’t many publishing companies in my area and I don’t want to live in a city by myself. So I’m trying to get a job as an administrative assistant for now so I can live at home and start paying off my student loans. But maybe I’ll end up waitressing for the summer (or longer).  Maybe I’ll open a bakery. Maybe I’ll travel to Bugarach, France, to live with the crazy people there who think aliens are going to beam them to a different planet just before the world gets destroyed in December, and then write a book about my experience.In the next few years, maybe I’ll make it to Boston and actually work in publishing. Maybe I’ll just stay in my hometown working in a totally unrelated field.

The truth is, the world is open in front of me, and I’m not sure what God has in store for me after May 12. But I’m excited to find out.

P.S. I think a few weeks ago I mentioned talking more about Reading Day and then I never did. Basically, all I really wanted to talk about was Duct Tape Wars, because it’s one of the best things about Messiah. I’d explain what it is, but it’s much easier (and more entertaining for you) if you just watch a youtube clip of it. The only disclaimer I’m going to give you is that the blue is the North Complex dorms and the red side is the South Complex dorms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpVgffiDaic

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Posted By ss1366 on April 27, 2012

I’m the kind of person who generally likes to blend into the background. I’m not antisocial, I just prefer to sit and watch a performance instead of getting up to perform myself (unless, of course, I’m on stage with enough people that I can pretend no one’s looking at me). Unfortunately for me, one of my best friends, Christie, is the exact opposite of me. She’s very outgoing and persistent, and honestly, she’s the coolest person I know.

I met her during the Accepted Student Preview Day for the English department way back in the spring of 2008. We were separated from our parents at one point, so the two of us hung out for most of the day. I promptly forgot about her once I got home. When I returned four months later, I discovered she was in my peer group and an English major and a dancer. We’ve been great friends ever since, and she’s been trying to get me to do all sorts of crazy, out-going things with her, nearly all of which I’ve at least tried to refuse. She’s very persuasive, so half the time I go along with her. For example she once got me to go on a trek with her in the woods to find some daffodils she wanted a picture of because we’d been studying Romantic Period Literature; I went and ended up having to walk through tall grass, that were probably infested with ticks and/or snakes, next to a water treatment plant (not at all pleasant for a germiphobe like myself) only to discover that a marsh stood between us and those ridiculous flowers.

Anyway, the point of this whole story is that every year for the past four or so years, the members of Sigma Tau Delta (the English Honors Society) puts on a Variety Show to prove that English professors and majors can do more than read and write. I’ve never participated because I don’t have many showcaseable talents. I read, I write, I knit, I cross-stitch, I make a mean cookie, I dance but I don’t choreograph. Nothing very performable. But over spring break about a month ago, Christie texted me saying something like: “Do you want to put together a zumba dance for the variety show with me? We can get the profs up there too and it’ll be really funny!” I had the two letters “no” typed out on screen when I was hit with a bit of guilt. I literally almost always say no to Christie’s ideas. So I decided to go along with it even though I’d never done zumba in my life. After all, she was going to get two more dancers from the department to do it with us.

Well, fast-forward to two nights before the show. We’ve done literally nothing to prepare. As someone who had no idea what to do, I was freaking out just a bit. But we finally got together and learned dance moves to the refrain of Shakira’s “Waka Waka.” Then I found out we were basically going to improvise and freestyle for the rest, but each of us had to take a turn leading. Again, I have no choreographing skills, but I thought the dance was fun, so I went with it. We kept coming up with so many random dance moves from different dance genres, and even decided to see if we could throw some leap frog in there at the end. So what started out as zumba turned into zumba-leap-frog and then into interpretive-zumba-with-a-twist.

Wednesday came, and I looked some up online literally fifteen minutes before I had to run out the door to get to Climenhaga for the show. We’d kept our performance a secret from most of the people in the department (the profs were completely in the dark about it), and we were the last act of the night.

To make our dance even more fun and ridiculous, we decided to dress up like we were in an ’80s workout video and call ourselves “The Spicey Girls” (from Spice Girls, get it?). Up until the show was about to start, I was really nervous about getting up in front of everyone, but then I had a sudden realization: 1) even though the potential of making an idiot of myself was very high, at least I had Christie with me, and 2) I’m a senior and there’s a good chance that I won’t ever see most of these people again (a sad thought in some cases but when you’re trying to convince yourself to do something ridiculous, it’s a great thought).

Honestly, I had so much fun I can’t believe I almost refused to do it. We got two professors (one who was particularly horrified at having been volunteered for it), and a few other students and led them in the song. Halfway through, we invited/dragged nearly everyone else up there and closed the show with a good, old fashion, semi-spontaneous dance party! We even got the leap frog in there. I have a feeling future generations of English majors are going to have to try really hard to top that in future variety shows.  =)

**For more information about fun happenings in the English Department, you can check out the Messiah College English Department page on facebook.

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Posted By ss1366 on April 27, 2012

I always have only two complaints about Service Day: 1) the morning always starts way to early–I got out of bed not long after the sun got up–and 2) it’s always really chilly for the first half of the morning. Those two things aside, Service Day (which the campus held two Thursdays ago) is one of the most fantastic days of the spring semester, and is always such a blessing to everyone involved.

This year, I worked registration for the Special Olympics with my friend Christie as per usual, but we were assigned a different position than we’d done in past years. Normally, we ran boxes of Buddy Bags to different schools and paired athletes up with Buddies. This year, we got to be the ones who escorted the schools from their buses across the Covered Bridge to the parking lot. I absolutely loved seeing how excited most of the athletes, most of them kids from early elementary up to high school, were as they unloaded.

After Christie and I completed the registration part, we went to the field looking for friends of ours who were serving as Buddies. We’ve always been afraid that we would lose our own athlete or make them late for an event, so we never have been Buddies ourselves. However, it’s always  fun tagging along with our friends and their athletes. The athletes of all ages absolutely love competing and having a Buddy for the day. The younger kids spend the day watching the competitions and playing in the Olympic Village where they have lots of opportunities to win prizes. The older kids and adults compete in running, field, and swimming events.

This year, my two friends Ana and Meghan were Buddies for two sixth grade girls, Rebecca and Desirae. At first, Ana and Rebecca were separated from the rest of us, but then Meghan and Desirae disappeared on Christie and I after Desirae won the 50m dash (they found us later). So we found Ana again. At first, Rebecca didn’t understand why we were hanging out with them, but she soon decided that it was awesome to have three Buddies instead of one. It was so much fun cheering for both girls (Rebecca won second place in the 200m), and hanging with both of them at lunchtime.

I have to say after yesterday, helping out with the Special Olympics will be one of the things I miss most about Messiah. I was studying abroad last year, and I’d forgotten how amazing it is. So much time and effort goes into it, and it always turns out great. The entire area is filled with excitement and energy, and everyone has a great time. For example, I heard from one of the men working registration that his wife helped make three thousand sandwiches the day before to feed all the athletes, Buddies, and other volunteers. Christie and I were trying to figure out how many loafs of bread that would be, but we stopped after we decided that a normal loaf probably has twenty slices (there’s a reason we’re English majors: math isn’t our friend). And it’s really cool to see the same athletes year after year as you walk around the Olympic Village and the sports field. There’s one high school aged athlete that Christie and I have nicknamed Dance Guy because every year he hangs out at the DJ tent for the entire day just dancing. He loves it so much that I’m pretty sure he only leaves for his events and (maybe) lunch.

By the end of the day, I was very tired and a little sunburnt, but it was definitely worth it!

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Posted By ss1366 on April 13, 2012

This past weekend, I went home the final break of my undergraduate career. My older sister kept asking me if I felt sad about that, and, thinking about it, I honestly didn’t feel sad. Sure, I will miss my friends and I do love learning new things, but at this point in the semester, I can’t imagine how people who go to college for more than four years survive. My brain feels so tired right now that I could go six months without reading another book if I had the chance…well, that’s more than a bit of a stretch since I barely go a day without reading a book of some sorts just because I want to, but I’m sure you get my point. Besides that, it feels good  to know that I’ve almost completed something that I’ve invested four years of my life into…and, I’m not going to lie, I was homeschooled so I’m really excited to actually participate in a commencement ceremony.

There are just two and a half weeks of class left, so everything is getting down to the wire. As I came back from Easter Break on Monday, I felt extremely overwhelmed by all the papers I have  to polish/edit/write before May 4 (when my senior writing portfolio is due). But then I sat there and realized starting at the list I’d written out with all the papers I have to write on it wasn’t doing my any good. If anything, it made me freak out even more. So then I decided to just suck up my apprehension, get over my lack of motivation, and just actually get started writing a paper. Guess what: I now have three papers done and one mostly done (except for editing stuff), and I feel so much better about life. Not only do I have that much less to do, but I also got to cross those three papers off my list, which is just about one of the best feelings in the world. I don’t know why, but crossing things off a to-do list is just so amazing that if I complete a task or assignment that I forgot to write on the list, I add it just so I can cross it out. Sometimes, it’s just those little things in life that get you through the stress of college (I used to think it was just a weird quirk of mine, but since I came to college I’ve found a lot of people do exactly the same thing).

Anyway, at times this point in the academic year can seem like death, especially since the way the spring semester is set up it can feel like all  this work suddenly crashes down on you without you realizing it was coming up so quickly. But it’s also a really fun point in the year as well. As I previously mentioned in another post, spring on campus is absolutely breathtaking. The grounds crew here does a fantastic job with the landscaping so we always have really pretty flowers everywhere. Additionally, all the trees are coming out. Along the walkway that runs from North Complex to the Eisenhower Campus Center, there are cherry trees that are in full bloom right now. My allergies despise them, but from a distance they are just beautiful.

This is also the season when you can start doing fun things outdoors. For example, my friends and I are going to have a picnic dinner tonight and play kickball. Just walking around campus, you see so many more people milling around or sitting in the sun to read for class.

Of course, on of the best parts of spring are two days that are coming up: Service Day and Reading Day. Service Day is next Thursday, and is the one day a year when practically the entire college shuts down in order to participate in various service projects. We have the Special Olympics on campus that day, which hundreds of students always help out with, and many off-campus projects that help the community around us in different ways. I was abroad last spring so I wasn’t on campus, but the two years before that I volunteered with my friend Christie to be Athlete Registration worker for the Special Olympics, and we’re doing it again this year, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

As for Reading Day…well, that’s not until May 2, so you’ll just have to wait until later to find out about that.  =)

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Posted By ss1366 on February 29, 2012

It’s that time of year: the air is finally feeling like spring!!!

While we haven’t really had much of a winter here in Grantham (or really anywhere in the Northeast), it still felt amazing to be able to walk around for the past two days with just a sweater and no bulky winter coat. Some people on campus are taking the fifty-sixty degree weather and clear skies to mean that it’s time to break out  the flip-flops and shorts, but I’m not that extreme. As a native New Englander, I can’t bring myself to wear the flip-flops until March, at least.

I absolutely love our campus in the spring. There are always people outside playing frisbee or just sitting in the sun working on assignments. The nice weather isn’t the greatest when it comes to concentrating on school work and classes (there’s nothing worse than sitting in class, staring out at the sunshine that you can’t be in at the moment), but it definitely brings a new vitality to campus. Consciously or unconsciously, it seems the entire student body follows this sort of thought process once spring starts to arrive: “Finally, the long (or short) winter is over. That means the school year’s almost finished. We can do it!”

I know a few people who are upset that we haven’t really gotten snow since October 30th, when we got hit with a huge snowfall that immediately melted, and I have to agree it would be nice to get one more huge snowstorm (just not during spring break in two weeks). But at the same time, I love the refreshing coolness of spring air and can’t wait until the trees get leaves and the flowers start to poke their way out of the ground. Plus, with the promise of warmer temperatures, walking around campus gets much more pleasant.

Of course, today it was raining and cold again, but hey, it is only February. Give it a month or so, and spring will be in full swing around here!

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Posted By ss1366 on February 24, 2012

Just yesterday, I was crossing out the day on my course calendars and realized something: I am a third of the way through with my final semester. Today marks the end of the fourth week of the semester that is only twelve weeks long thanks to our J-term and May Term. I shared this realization with a few of my senior classmates and friends, all of whom were like, “Oh gosh! Why did you tell me that?” I myself feel the same anxiety that they do about the thought of graduating. The past four years seemed to take a long time to go by, but now that they are gone, I feel like they went passed with supersonic speed. All the same, I can’t help getting excited about graduating.

Yes, it is great to be in school with nothing more than tests and papers to worry about (though those in themselves are enough to give you an ulcer sometimes). And most definitely it’s great to be in the college environment with all its activities, concerts, and other such fun things to with all your friends. But at the same time, I find it exciting that in just a little under three months, I’m going to be beginning a new phase of my life. Sure, I have no clue what I’m going to be doing after I return to Massachusetts. Jobs are scarce for poor college students with few experiences in the work force of our choice (I know because I’ve been trying to find a job for a month now to no affect), but that in part makes it more adventuresome.

We college students have all been trained in certain fields with the mindset that we will get employed doing whatever it is we are studying. Experts tell us that most college students never work in a field related to their major, but of course, we all say, “Well I definitely will,” even though secretly we know that probably isn’t true. But that doesn’t bother me that much. College education is expensive, but since I think one of the most important part of the education a person receives at a college, especially a liberal arts one, is how to work in multiple fields and in diverse social situations, I don’t consider my education a waste just because I might not get a job in the English field (not that there really is such a thing).

I think what excites me the most about graduating is the thought that there is just so many possibilities for my life after this. Ideally, I would like to go into publishing. I’ve worked on an annual periodical publication and a quarterly publication, and now I would like to try book publishing. Unfortunately for me, I live in a semi-rural area with few book publishers, and none of them are hiring. I could move to Boston, but I’d rather not live in a large city on my own. So what to do? I haven’t figured out where God is leading me next other than back to my hometown for now, but all there is so much potential it amazes me. It’s like a puzzle. I just can’t find the piece I’m looking for just yet.

It could be that I finally do get my job in an editorial department of any kind of publication, or maybe I’ll have to be a waitress for a while, writing in my spare time in order to stay connected with the literary world that I adore. Or maybe I’ll end up doing something totally different. There is definitely uncertainty in it which makes me want to slow time so that graduation day won’t come for a long time, but that would just be delaying the inevitable. Recently I was talking to a woman who told me how it always amazes her when she thinks back over her life and can see how God put her in situations and brought people across her path to bring her to where she is today. Already I can look back as a senior in college and see how much I’ve matured and changed in the past four years as God has been preparing me for my next step in life. I may not know what that step is quite yet, but I’m excited to find out.

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Posted By ss1366 on February 10, 2012

In college, procrastination is an art form. We don’t just put things off, we delay the inevitable under the guise of hanging out with friends, taking time to relax so that our brains don’t get overstretched (and we say this as if we had actually made an attempt to stretch them in the first place), going to work out so that we’ll think better (which does really help, though once we get back to our rooms we probably will be “too tired” to focus), searching for things on the internet that will motivate us, or sifting through youtube looking for the perfect study music…or rather the perfect distraction that you will just have to show all your friends. And sometimes, we don’t even try to disguise it. As one of my roommates discovered while she was avoiding a paper by browsing stumbledupon: “Time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted!” Anyway, here is one youtube video my roommate found (or someone posted to her wall). It’s a great example of one of those videos you watch just because you don’t want to do something else, but at the same time, it’s pretty funny. Enjoy!

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Posted By ss1366 on February 8, 2012

Last night, I decided to check today’s weather before I turned off my computer. Normally I forget to do that, which means in the morning I play the “Guess what temperature it’ll be today” game as I pick out what I want to wear. Since it is winter, you might assume that I should always go with long sleeves and sweaters, but here in the Susquehanna Valley, anything can happen. Just last week it was nearly 60 on campus! Anyway, I pulled up the weather for Grantham and got the best surprise ever: weather.com predicted an inch of snow to fall today!

Even though I expected it to come, in the rush of the morning I temporarily forgot about it. I have no classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so I went to the library to get my homework done. The computer lab in the library sits right in the heart of the building with no windows. I went into it around 9:15 and sat working on a couple of short essays for about an hour and a half. Then, I finally emerged and made my way through the library to my new favorite thinking spot to read for class. As I was about to sit down and lose myself in the book, I glanced out the window and there it was! Those beautiful, delicate, amazing, intricate little flakes falling softly to the ground, coating the trees and bushes with powder.

Some people, like my sister and two of my friends for example, despise snow. One girl who lived on my freshman floor said that whenever it snowed she always felt like she was in a freezer that needed to be defrosted. Personally, I view it as one of the two miracles God continues to bless humanity with to reveal to them His presence as Creator (the other one is babies). I mean, think of all the other forms of precipitation. Rain is just blank drops of water. Hail are round balls of ice that could kill you if it hits you just right. Sleet is just grossness falling from the sky. But snow…Snow is made up of ice crystals gently weaving together in the clouds. Each one is a work of art in its own right.

There is nothing better in my mind than that wonderful, peaceful silence that comes over the earth during a snowfall. Even after the flakes stop falling down from the sky, there is a quiet softness to the world. It’s like a dreamless sleep that refreshes while still holding the potential for the happiest of dreams. I love walking around outside during the snow, just listening to it falling and the silence in between each patter.

On campus, snow allows students to take a break from being grown up. Every time we get enough accumulation to coat the ground, you can see at least a handful of students on Cemetery Hill with their dining hall trays trying to sled down the steep slope. Other students simply run out into the snow cheering, whooping, and throwing snowballs. During my sophomore year, we got two major snowstorms in a row that left the campus buried in over two feet of snow. Needless to say, the college closed for two days. Everyone had a blast as we waited to be dug out! My friends and I spent an entire afternoon outside building snowmen and a fort that had a wall well over five feet on one side (the campus is hilly so we weren’t building it on a flat surface). All  that night and the next day people walking by took pictures in it, and some people even told their friends that they made it.

The storm today isn’t supposed to leave more than an inch of snow that I know will probably melt before the weekend, but it certainly is a nice change from the usual dreary scenery of bare trees laying dormant, waiting for spring. It’s been a relatively snow-less winter here, but who knows–maybe we’ll get a March snowstorm!

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Posted By ss1366 on January 18, 2012

So, I’m sure you are all aware of Charlie Sheen’s mental breakdown last year. Though most of us could care less about one man’s mid-life crisis (particularly one who did and said so many questionable and ridiculous things), there is one thing that I think we all need to thank Charlie Sheen for: introducing us to the concept of “winning.”

During an ABC 20/20 interview last March, Charlie Sheen said regarding his life that “It’s perfect. It’s awesome. Every day is just filled with just wins. All we do is put wins in the record books.” Many people have picked up on this and have begun to say things like “You’re winning right now” to people who just had a Charlie Sheen moment (a.k.a., they did something stupid). It may be difficult to understand why exactly this should be something that we should all be thankful for, so please bear with me as I explain.

I’m a child of the nineties. When I was in high school, the “epic fail” was just becoming in vogue (at least, in my circles it was). Did you trip as you’re going up the stairs? Your peers would quickly inform you, that was a fail. Did you spill your entire pack of Skittles across a desk in the middle of the library? That’s a fail too. Did you just walk into a pole because you were too busy texting to watch where you were walking? Well, then that’s an epic fail.

The Fail becomes a part of your life. One of the first times I cooked dinner for my friends last fall, I didn’t put the water on to boil soon enough as so delayed dinner for a good chunk of time. Fail. Another time I grabbed the wrong book for class and we actually needed it that day. Another fail.

As I hope you can sense, being told you fail isn’t the greatest for your self-esteem (or whatever you want to call it). Though people who use the term don’t mean it harshly or literally, the word “fail” in and of itself connotates something unpleasant. The OED defines it as “To be or become deficient.” Not something anyone wants to happen to them. Yet, in our culture, we still need some sort of phrase to use when people do foolish things or when random things happen to them.

That’s where Charlie Sheen comes in. Thanks to him, the term “winning” has taken on another meaning. It’s replaced the Epic Fail. One of my two roommates started using the term several months ago, and I realized just the other day that we no longer tell each other “You fail” or “That was a fail.” Now, it’s all about winning. Believe me, it makes you feel much better about whatever ridiculous situation you find yourself in than failing does. It really raises morale in people and in groups.

For example, just last week I made omelets and bacon for dinner for my friends and I. Don’t ask why, but I decided it might be a good idea to pour the sizzling hot bacon grease into…wait for it…an empty yogurt cup that was sitting on the counter. Much to my surprise, the cup then started to melt. I had to hold it over the sink, and all the grease I had tried to prevent from going down the drain went down the drain. “Wow,” my roommate said. “You’re winning right now.” And you know, that just sounds so much better than failing, and, though I was still kicking myself for doing it, it brought a smile to my face. I definitely was winning at life!

So thank you Charlie Sheen for letting us know that no matter how many stupid things we do or how many random things happen to us, we are still winners!

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Posted By ss1366 on January 12, 2012

People come to college for a plethora (that’s right, I said ‘plethora’) of reasons. Some love to study and learn, others see college as the only means for getting a decent job, a few don’t know what to do with their lives and come in order to figure that out, and even more come just for the party. Of course, theoretically at a Christian college most students are not there for the party, but you never know.

American culture upholds colleges and universities as institutions of “higher education,” referring to the level of difficulty in the academic setting. However, now that I am in my eighth and final semester of my undergraduate career, I see the value of a college education in a very different light. While it’s true that we learn a lot here about the theory, jargon, and techniques of our chosen field and are presented with many new and challenging intellectual ideas that we have to grapple with, the real benefit of college is the lesson you get between classes.

I’m talking about how to live with other people. I came to college as a homeschooled kid who had no experience living with people outside her family. I wasn’t sheltered or anything, but camps were not my  thing and I’d never been on a missions trip either. The closest experience I’d had to dorm life was attending two weekend-long youth retreats during high school. So, the prospect of moving into a 12″X18″ room with a girl I’d never met and on top of that having to share a bathroom with the entire floor scared me to death. But that was one of the greatest learning experiences for me.

Living with another person and avoiding undue drama requires a great deal of patience and humility. On the one hand, you have to think of the other person’s needs. For example, it’s 11 p.m. and your roommate would like to go to bed and you still have two pages to write for a paper due tomorrow. You can either stay there and type (leaving the lights on, of course, so you can see your notes) potentially disturbing your roommate, or you can get up and go sit in the lounge or study room or hallway and finish there. In another case, you happen to be a messy person and your roommate’s a clean freak. Taking the time once or twice a week to tidy up your part of the room won’t kill you, and will probably help both of you to stay more sane in the midst of a semester.

For me, however, the real struggle came not from learning to live with my roommates, but learning to live with the neighbors. Incoming students might not realize this, but dormitories are not the most well-constructed buildings in the world. I don’t mean that they are going to fall down on you. They are structurally sound, but the walls tend to be very thin. At my college, the walls are made with cinder block walls that I sometimes think were designed to conduct sound. That can lead to some conflicts, especially since 1) loud people don’t realize  they are being loud, and 2) loud people often don’t realize just how thin the walls really are.

So you end up with situations like this: It’s 1 a.m. and you have a class at 8 a.m. You’re almost asleep when the girls next door decide to have a dance party. They are singing and dancing and just being overall obnoxious. What do you do? I’m generally a non-confrontational sort of person, so I mostly just gritted my teeth and complained to myself until they stopped. Thinking back, however, that didn’t help anyone.

The problem shouldn’t be ignored (especially since if it happens more than once), but it also should be handled delicately because the people often don’t realize anyone else can hear them. Approach your neighbors nicely but firmly, telling them your complaint and asking (rather than telling) them to please keep their noise level appropriate to the hour. If the problem continues, try using ear plugs at night. I’ve recently started using them myself, and it’s amazing how much of the little noises they block out that has helped me to sleep better.

One more note about loud neighbors, if they are loud during the day while you’re studying, don’t get mad. Just move to a different area or put in your headphones. Just as you have the right to sleep at night, they have the right to make noise. After all, life isn’t all about studying and work, even at a college.

It’s the little things, the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” things, that make all the difference in a roommate relationship. It takes time and intentionality, but by working on those skills through college living, you will be blessed not only in your current situation but also in your future as you get hired in a company and/or married. It’s these kinds of lessons on living with and relating to each other that will help you the most in the future as you set out to accomplish whatever it is God would have you do.

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