Embrace the college experience
Bobbi Yost
The typical and highly sought-after college experience can be seen practically anywhere. From TV shows and movies, to songs like “I Love College” by Asher Roth, college is normally portrayed in a very stereotypical way: a bunch of kids living in dorms, rushing for a sorority or fraternity, and partying…a lot.
Surely, many students want that dramatized college lifestyle, some probably even live it, but at a community college the entire environment is completely different than what is seen and heard about in pop culture.
For instance, community colleges tend to lack dorms, making the whole dorm-life thing virtually impossible.
However, there are steps one can take to make home feel a little more like a dorm room.
As Shawn Phillip, student, advises, “If possible, stay in an apartment near a university, and live with friends.” Living away from home instantly enhances the college experience, and adding fun roommates to the equation can give it a dormlike quality.
Sadly, though, moving out isn’t always an option. While it can be difficult to feel like an adult when living with parents, staying at home throughout school does have its benefits.
If free room and board is a hard thing to give up, just make sure boundaries are set and do whatever it takes to make the rulers of the household abolish any sort of curfew.
As for a community college’s tendency to have neither sororities nor fraternities, they can be easily replaced.
When it comes down to it, all that those organizations really are is a group of friends. So at a community college, where joining one is not an option, finding a niche and making friends has to suffice.
In order to do that, one can take the advice of Abraham Ramirez, student, and, “Avoid just going to class and leaving.
Start a study group, join a club, or get a job on campus in order to make friends.” As Samuel Abell, student,
states, “If you make friends and find a group of people to hang out with around campus, you are bound to have more of a standard college experience.”
With all of their obvious differences, the admirable college experience and that of the community college do have one major thing in common. With all the stress of managing classes and work, students love to have fun; and, often times, fun equals parties.
When it all comes down to it, the community college lifestyle and the pop culture college lifestyle are not really that different. Achieving the experience seen on TV, observed in movies, and interpreted through songs, is really just an enormous balancing act.
