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STUDENT LIFE

Many young people will leave home when they finish high
school and go away to college. However, just as many will stay at
home and attend a local college or university. The student who
goes away will have several options open to them in terms of
living arrangements.

DORMS AND APARTMENTS

The simplest living option is a room in a university-run student
dormitory, or dorm, which is a large building where hundreds of
other students live. It is quite common to have a roommate. The
word roommate is used for the person you share a room with, as
well as someone you share a house or apartment with.
Dorms can be single-sex or coed (mixed), and will have rules
about curfews and guests, especially for students in their first years
of college. Despite the restrictions, dorm life provides a young
person's first taste of freedom and independence, away from their
parents. Students who live in dorms do not usually cook for
themselves, since the fees for on-campus living nearly always
include meals at the student cafeteria. It is not unusual, though, to
find a small refrigerator or microwave oven in a dorm room and
nearly every student has an electric popcorn popper.
You'll nearly always smell popcorn popping somewhere in a
dorm. It’s a favorite snack food for college students, and it
provides fuel for the all-night study sessions known as all-nighters.
If a student has to stay up all night preparing for a test or writing
an essay, they pull an all-nighter.
Another living option is to rent an apartment near the
university campus. This is usually done with one or two other
students and is probably the most expensive alternative, although it
does mean that a student is completely independent. Some
universities also own apartments for students to use.