Living in a dorm

[quote=”Dan G”]I think that for the most part, I have been pretty successful in college with the exception of a few problems. However, living in a dorm has been a real problem for me, even though having a single room has helped. My freshman year, I lived in an all guys dorm (big mistake), and I lived with a bunch of football players who liked to get drunk and harass me. If that wasn’t bad enough, the RA’s and hall director didn’t care, and just looked the other way. The last two years I’ve lived in a much better dorm, but this semester, a real jerk moved in next to me, and all he did was harass me. The hall director (the same one as freshman year) basically told me that the whole thing was my fault, and said that they couldn’t just move my neighbor, they had to move me also. Now, after I went through all of the trouble of moving all of my stuff downstairs, I found out that my former neighbor has not moved. I’m really sick of living in a dorm, but it looks like I’ll have to next year (fortunately with a different hall director). I was wondering if other LD students have had similar experiences living in dorms. I hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Dan[/quote]

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Dan:
Don’t worry about __where__ your former neighbors moves to.
If he is on the floor above, and down the hall, then that is OK.
I would be more concerned about being “razzed”, and harassed by
those you will be living with in your immediate area ( the rooms on
either side of you, and accross the hall) . Living in a “box” is tough.
Your peers should respect your status as a student, and son. You
are taking classes; trying to get by. You need quiet to study, like
everyone else. Some things, you wil have to work through.
As long as your neighbors, visitors to the dorms are quiet from 10pm—7am Sunday through Thursday; and 12:30am—9am Friday and Saturday, than things should be OK. Sometimes you’ll have to study elsewhere than your dorm room. Check out: Library, Empty Classrooms, Study rooms. Living in a shared house with roommates is a whole other deal.
Good luck. /signed/ Joe Tag,Jr.

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Dan and others,
my daughter has experienced problems in the dorm life herself. she is in her second year and through help with the counseling/LD services was able to get a single room this semester. many of the problems have been reduced by her being able to have quiet time and space to get organized, physically and mentally. Of course her roomates were deeply hurt by her departure, thinking she didn’t like them, but that wasn’t the case. she just needed a more stable setting and regular hours (they were night owls) and they were very disorganized. my concern is the social aspect of life. living alone and perhaps not getting together with others as often. but i have faith in her abilities overall. good luck with your situation. i myself need space in order to gather my thoughts. life in a dorm is challenging no matter what.
karina :)

I know that this is an older post but when I transferred to the university level I had called the school’s housing department and they stated that they did not offer any special accommodations for students with learning disabilities. What this meant was that if I wanted to live in the dorms I would need a roommate. I knew that having a roommate would be a problem so I never moved into the dorms. I contacted the disabled student services department about the dorms and I was told that they had nothing to do with housing. I believe I was told that I would need to live with a roommate for at least a year on campus before I could even ask for a solo room.

Therefore, I never moved into the dorms and commuted back and fourth almost every day.