Sometimes when I look back at my life during undergraduate studies, I struggle to know if I was a serious student or someone just passing through the school. I stayed at the school hall for two years. It was a girls hall and I must say those two years were the best part of my undergraduate journey.
For me, it was just like senior high school because I attended a girls school for my secondary education too. There were rules but there was nothing like the gates close at a particular time. Honestly, I never had any problems with the rules because I didn’t think they were terrible. After all, they were there to protect us.
As someone who hates to stay alone, I was even more happy to find out I was in a room with three other people. The room was spacious and the people in the room were lovely too. The facilities were quite okay and personally, I didn’t really need privacy for anything to be very honest. I’ve been trying to remember a time where something bad happened to me at the school hall and I can’t even find any. In fact, my academic performance was at its peak when I was at the hall.
Fast forward to when I went off campus. Somebody say hmm. Of course, my hostel was very nice with all that I needed. But the noise from neighbors? It was just too much. My hostel was more than a club house. There was always so much noise. Our rising bell was “the bluetooth devise is ready to pair” and then one Kanye West song will wake us up. I had a roommate and even though she could sleep through the noise, for me, it was a terrible thing to deal with. I had to even befriend one of those guys just to be telling him to reduce their music volume.
There were times, I had to leave the hostel in the middle of the night because it was just full of smoke from weed. Yep, weed. There was also a lot of drama. There were times I was even confused as to how those drama were finding their way to me. You’ll be at your corner and then some unnecessary rumor about you will be spreading like wildfire.
It was never like that in school hall. You’re allowed to do whatever you want but there are about 100 ladies just like you staying on the block with you so you’d definitely want to do things to keep whatever dignity that you have. But at the hostel off campus? Nobody even cares about any dignity.
Although there was privacy and comfort off campus as compared to the school hall, if I get the chance to go back, I’m still choosing school halls on campus. What’s the point of living a comfortable life off campus if you’ll go home with D+ just because your neighbor is obsessed with Kanye West?
Image is mine