Photo by Mollie Clements
Freshman year starts out for many exciting and scary. Resident advisors have plenty of events to take up your free time, you start to learn your roommates quirks and then classes start.
The excitement starts to die down to repetition and the new becomes mundane. The events that you thought would take up your time, all of a sudden you do not have time for. The fun quirks about your roommate start to annoy you. Classes start to become draining.
The room gets smaller and smaller.
The dorms that were once bursting with life are now lonely and cramped. Your best friend, who you thought would be a perfect match for your time at Western, has driven you to insanity.
Living in a space where you are 3 feet away from people at all times can lead to anxiety. Everywhere has people, and the antisocial part of me becomes over stimulated.
As someone who has always had their own room and own space to mess around, living in a small room with someone else has unfortunately not worked well.
Many students, including myself, have made it to winter quarter and can no longer take the cramped experience of dorm life.
If you have come to the same conclusion as myself, it is time to move out to a space that will allow for growth and self-love.
For the students that have found themselves in a similar spot and do not have the option to move out, try to find a quiet space to spend some time. The quiet library on the 4th floor of Wilson Library can be heaven for the person who needs time to themselves.
A solution I have found to my cramped dorm life has been to take long warm showers to wash off the anxiety of the day and allow time to process.
The thought of moving out on my own is a scary thought in itself, just as moving into the dorms felt almost five months ago.
I have found the perfect place to move and made sure I could afford this new space. All that is left to do is to split everything my current roommate and I share, finish the quarter with good grades and pack up my life yet again.
The stress of these three seemingly simple tasks has been taunting me and left me in a state of anxiety.
These stresses have led me to try my hardest to be excited for the future and how much happier I will be in the new space.
Sometimes that is all a person needs -- a space to call their own.
