FollowIt’s difficult to think about starting college without the ideas of change and adjustment coming up. It’s the topic of conversation at dinners, at picnics, while waiting in line at the grocery store–people never stop talking about how much you will have to change to survive. When any individuals with vocal cords and an opinion find out you are going to college, they always seem to tell you about how different it will be to have the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want. They have no qualms about warning you how hard it is to shed the freshman fifteen once you’ve packed them on. They also never forget to scare you senseless with tales of how much harder you will have to work to make yourself a formidable competitor in massive weeder classes. But the one thing that should be mentioned, the one crucial thing that pretty much everyone seems to forget, is the bathroom adjustment.
My adjustment to sharing a 13-by-13 foot room with two other people paled in comparison to the adjustment I made to sharing four shower stalls and three toilets with 30 other girls, the latter is probably the hardest adjustment one has to make. I went from the comfort of having a private bathroom in which I could shower without shoes on, brush my teeth freely, sing loudly and completely off-key, to one where the only partition I had between my shower-capped self and the rest of my floor was a stall door. Suddenly, making faces in the mirror while brushing my teeth or walking into the bathroom in the afternoon looking as if I had just rolled out of bed (which, let’s be honest, I had) was instant cause of self consciousness. The reality of college did not truly hit me until I found myself struggling to open my bathroom locker at 7:26 a.m. so that I could retrieve my toothbrush in time for my first college 8 a.m. class.
It was only a week into the semester when I realized that the reason that nobody ever talks about the bathroom experience is because it’s a tragic reality that nobody wants to share with others. Nobody looks back fondly upon finding vomit in the sinks on Sunday morning. Nobody likes to talk about opening their eyes after shampooing only to find themselves face to face with clumps of hair that clearly aren’t theirs smeared on the walls. But, at the same time, shouldn’t we talk about the bathrooms? Aren’t the bathrooms the hotbed of friendship formations of college dorms? Wouldn’t it be nicer to catch up with friends over acne wash and toothpaste instead of over coffee and croissants? Isn’t trooping through a year of sharing a bathroom with 30 other people an integral part of the character building experience that college entails?
The college bathroom struggle, thus far, has not been anything close to what I expected it to be, possibly because I didn’t expect it at all. But I have already grown so much from this daily struggle. I have formed friendships over toothpaste-foam splattering laughter, bonded while waiting in line for the showers, and tryed to get to the bottom of the weekend-long mystery of missing toilet paper. I have all but mastered the art of shaving my legs standing up. And, perhaps most importantly, I have learned the true definition of home: home is where you can shower without shoes on.
Image: William Kunz
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