The best lesson

About this time last year, I was in the same place as the many freshmen arriving on campus today. I hadn’t yet done things that have ended up shaping my past year as a university student: I hadn’t read the Indiana Daily Student or attended lectures in Ballantine Hall. But most importantly, I’d never lived in a dorm room.

Coming from high school, I think I underestimated the important role my living environment would play in my education. Frankly, I imagined it would be fun to live on a floor with 50 peers, but I didn’t guess it would become one of the most formative experiences of my college years.

I was surprised to find that, for me, the residence halls put the humanistic values my liberal arts education emphasized into practice. Of course, more than a few professors had reminded me that the lessons we find in literature and economics and history and most every academic pursuit are really about people and how they interact, but I’d never been so challenged to look for the best in others or provided with a place for me to bring those lessons to life as when I stepped into my dorm. Future freshmen, here’s why.

Living confined in a small space with a roommate quickly instills the value of negotiation – it’s not just for delegates to the United Nations. For possibly the first time in your life, you’ll have to take someone else’s feelings into consideration when you stay up late with the lights on and disrupt his or her sleep or force the both of you into attending alcohol education all over again because you got caught storing beer in your refrigerator. And when you don’t agree about the way to proceed in sharing your small piece of turf, the two of you will learn to somehow resolve your differences in a (hopefully) civilized manner.

Dorm life breathes the 21st century into Machiavelli’s 15th-century political advice. More than having to get along with your roommate, your floor will challenge you to form meaningful alliances with other humans who are willing to support you when the times are tough and, for the first time, your family isn’t there to dry your tears and pat your back. What’s more, each floor has some sort of student government. If you are an aspiring politician, maybe you will make your break into politics here and even find yourself justifying your ends by your means.

But first and foremost, dorm living is most certainly a lesson in aesthetics. In the new and crazy place that has just become your home, you’ll have to ask what is really important in your own life. Perhaps you’ll find completely different lessons than I have had. At least you’re about to have the opportunity to discover your own values for yourself. Know that IU is right for strong-arming you into a year of Residential Programs and Services housing. It will make your year, and the rest of your life.