Carleton student: The ups and downs of different roommate situations
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Carleton College senior Claire Weinberg blogs about the pros and cons of various living arrangements at the school, from living alone to sharing an apartment with half a dozen people.
When I was in school, our only official option was to share a room with another person. (My roommate moved out to join a fraternity my freshman year, so I got lucky.) Or we could rent an apartment somewhere in town.
So I find this "quad/quint" thing rather quaint.
Here's the first option. I have no idea what loneliness she's talking about:
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Single. There are single rooms in all the dorms that you can live in starting sophomore year. They're some of the easiest rooms to get in room draw.
Pro: PRIVACY. This cannot be overstated as a reason to live in a single. There are very few truly private places on campus, perhaps because of institutional fear of inappropriate behavior in public spaces, I don't really know. But if you have a significant other or like to have your space in the mornings and evenings, a single is a great advantage.
Con: LONELINESS. You don't have built-in social interaction if you live in a single, so you can go days without talking to anyone if you don't make an effort. My friend who had a single last year said that for the entirety of fall term, when all the juniors were abroad, no one had been in his single but him. This is a depressing thing. But if you're a solitary person, you might not mind it too much.