With Fall Arrival quickly approaching at colleges around the country, all the stores are stocked to the brim with this-and-that and bric-a-brac for your dorm room, and you and the parents have probably made several trips to a store to buy all the necessities.
So you are ready, correct?
Once the roommate is chosen and the room outfitted, it would be easy to lean back and think that you’re ready for all that college living could throw at you. But a Wii and a flat screen TV won’t be the key to your happiness in college. By and large, your satisfaction with college will be determined by the quality of the interactions you have with others around you and the dorm accessories are well…peripheral.
So what do we mean when we talk about “interactions” ?
One major study of resident student satisfaction, conducted by the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International (ACUHO-I) breaks down interaction into four key components: Making friends, managing relationships, sharing space and managing conflict. And during my time doing assessment for Residence Life at Penn State, we learned that satisfaction with these interactions is a key indicator of satisfaction with residence hall living.
Let’s take a look at some things you can do to explore these topics as you work toward a successful transition to college.
Making Friends
To some people, making friends comes easily; to others, it’s a major undertaking. Facebook and other social networking sites make it easy to connect with your friends from back home, but branching out and meeting people at your new school is kind of imperative. If you are someone who struggles with making friends, just realize that you are not alone, and that many people are there to help you.
In most residence halls an upperclass student serves as a resident assistant. This person enforces campus policies, responds to student issues and emergencies, and plans programs and events for the students. Your RA can be a good resource for meeting people. Be sure to meet your RA on day one, and ask about events for your residence hall. Most universities plan a week or so of events during the fall arrival period with one goal in mind: helping students make friends and identify programs and resources that will help new students explore their interests and get connected to people with similar interests across campus. Take advantage of these events. They are probably the best way to get on the fast track to making new friends in college.
Managing Relationships
If making friends is a key factor in determining your happiness, then surely keeping those friends (or at least not making enemies) follows as a good skill. The relationship with your roommate probably looms largest among the relationships you will need to negotiate, since it has a direct relationship on your happiness in the room.
Many schools encourage new roommates to sit down and hammer out a ”roommate agreement.” These documents usually rely on the students sitting down together to talk through how they would like to interact, whether items in the room will be shared, when guests can stay over, and how they will manage the basics of keeping the room (cleaning, taking out the trash, etc.) If your school doesn’t have a standard roommate agreement, it’s easy enough to draw something up yourself. The important things about doing this are a.) have a real sit-down, face-t0-face conversation, b.) write down what was agreed upon, c.) review it so everything is clear, and d.) all parties should sign it (so it’s clear that an actual agreement has been made.)
Sharing Space
Sharing space with a roommate is only part of the issue here. Today’s students haven’t usually shared a room with a sibling growing up, so this is a constant trial and error type of situation. But it doesn’t stop at your room door. How you act as a member of the larger community is part of this issue, too. How you deal with noise (including the amount of noise you make, and how you respond to comments from neighbors about your own noise level), how clean you maintain your room, and whether you leave the common areas of the hall in good condition are major community concerns. In fact they are often a factor in the last category:
Managing Conflict
Colleges are places where people of various races, religions, political persuastions and interests come together. This simultaneously creates an interesting dynamic: you will experience a wide range of diversity on campus, as well as people who are determined not to be exposed to it. Finding an appropriate balance between managing conflict and staying true to your values, you will need to explore how you actually deal with conflict. There are quizzes online to help you gauge your level of assertiveness. These can help you understand how you manage conflict now, so you can adjust your conflict style if it isn’t working for you. This is hard work, but the payoff is potentially huge, because finding a new style will not only help you in your residence hall, but in your life and career.
Best of luck to you as the school year begins. As you transition to college, it’s my hope that you will be successful and happy, and that you’ll have many, many successful interactions with others as you being to make friends, manage your relationships, share space and manage conflict. Best of luck to you this academic year.
If you are looking for 1-on-1 assistance in making a successful plan for college, contact me at sean@higheredlifecoach.com about the benefits of life coaching.
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Sean Cook has 15 years of experience working in Higher Education, as a Student Affairs Professional. He is a Certified Life and Career Coach through the Life Purpose Institute, a program accredited by the International Coach Federation. Sean also writes about career issues in higher education for our companion site, HigherEdCareerCoach.com and is a periodic contributor to the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog.
