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I no longer have the chance to live in a dorm
Well, maybe a graduate student dorm, but those are more like apartment suites rather than the "bedrooms on a hallway" model of dorms.
The social atmosphere of a dorm is much, much better than that of an apartment building. People are much more social and inviting, basically. When your only private space is a room, and it exits onto a public space shared by ten, twenty, thirty people, you get to know those people much more fondly. Even if your tastes might not be the same as others--be it music, decor, lifestyle, or otherwise--it's much easier to not just become acquainted with your neighbors but also to socialize with them on a frequent (even if irregular) basis.
It sucks that there's pretty much no other first-world living arrangement that does that. The closest is multi-bedroom apartment housing, but even then you get at most about four to eight people sharing a common area off a multi-bedroom apartment suite. And then you get most single-family or single-person housing. People rarely come out of apartments/condos/co-op units to socialize--walk around on a floor of a dorm and a floor of an apartment building on a Thursday afternoon at, say, 5:30 PM local time, and see how many doors are open. Chances are that in the dorm, even the quietest of dorms, you see at least a few doors open, and the common areas in use. In an apartment building, you're lucky to see even one door open, and common areas are more like quiet lounges.
And then separating people further we have houses. Multi-family houses first, and then single-family houses in tightly-spaced communities, and then single-family houses on half-acre lots, and then single-family houses on multi-acre lots which are probably meant as farmland or grazing land anyway. And then, of course, actual farm properties and other remote properties. By that point you're almost certainly driving to see your neighbor.
But the annoying thing is that you have people driving to see their neighbors even in upscale suburban residential communities neighborhoods. Even, like, ten houses down. That's less than a ten-minute walk, even with half-acre lots. Really now? Are people so damn distant? Yet everyone is just holed up in their own homes, and there's like, nothing to bring people outside to come together to get to even meet each other for the first time.
Comments
There is more motivation to get outside the more boring your living space is.
By extension, it's also the issue of living downtown compared to living in the suburbs. When you have walking or transit access to everything, you're more likely to go out and meet people. The suburbs are so far away from the action that you end up staying in your own home.
Certainly, I can see why people like Vancouver so much.
glennmagusharvey,
The social atmosphere of a dorm is much, much better than that of an apartment building. People are much more social and inviting, basically. When your only private space is a room, and it exits onto a public space shared by ten, twenty, thirty people, you get to know those people much more fondly. Even if your tastes might not be the same as others--be it music, decor, lifestyle, or otherwise--it's much easier to not just become acquainted with your neighbors but also to socialize with them on a frequent (even if irregular) basis.
You may be right. After all, it does seem like plenty of people have good things to say about the unique social experience in college/boarding school.
That being said, I think that could still be a matter of taste. I think that some people just have rather bad roommate/dorm situations in college. I feel like others tend to prefer the privacy of living in a quiet environment because they are introverted or just because they like having some alone time.
Anyway, I agree with you about people generally being more distant these days. I mean, I almost think that it defeats the purpose of a neighborhood when there is not really a sense of friendliness there, yet it seems tougher to encourage that friendliness when people act like strangers.
I'd say I'm reasonably introverted myself--I'm far more fond of spending evenings relaxing by myself alone or chatting comfortably with a small group of friends (possibly over a card or board game) than partying hard and getting drunk or attending some exciting outing such as a sports game or a night on the town.
But it's like, if not in an undergraduate dorm, it seems from my experience that there are precious few opportunities even to spend relaxing evenings with just a small group of friends--especially friends outside of one's own specialty. This is somewhat, but not fully, mitigated by the existence of common-interest groups like student clubs revolving around, say, gaming or animé; such groups unfortunately rely largely on planned activities that don't take advantage of one's surroundings, so very often it feels more like you have to go out of your way to seek a social setting rather than it being around you, and it has none of that comfortable spontaneity that a residence-based social setting would offer. (At least, outside of people choosing to stay after a club meeting.)
Eh. My college dorm was kind of a nightmare of obnoxious drunkards and druggies, and I was pretty glad to move the hell out of it. Like, as much as I appreciate the notion of an open opportunity to socialize with peers, this was the exact opposite of the type of peers I'd want to do so with.
Case in point, I'm pretty sure the RA was dealing drugs to the residents.
...perhaps I had a particularly rosy experience with a dorm.
That said, I did move out of one dorm because floor leaders seemed bent on turning what was once a quietly but amicably sociable floor into a loud and obnoxious partying floor.
Over here, the first-year towers tend to be the loud and obnoxious types while the one for veterans tends to be more reasonable. You have to pay more to get in the latter though.
^^
It's annoying how this kind of thing seems to be the default for the late teens to twenty somethings age group. This is pretty self-interested of me, but there's a wider social bias in favour of extroversion, leaving a lot of introverts cold or uncomfortably acting the part.
Introversion can be cool, right? Like Batman.
Likely you just don't see the introverts as much. I don't feel alienated too much since I still suck up to talk to professors a fair bit.
I live in one of those apartment style dorms. Yes, its more expensive and less open, but the rooms are much bigger, and more importantly, I have to share a bathroom with less people.
Okay, okay, fine, I admit I lived in the most or second-most conservative dorm on campus! And the bathrooms were clean! And games of Cities and Knights of Catan far outnumbered loud parties, possibly even in the wing known for partying!
I live in an apartment-style dorm. Which is a good thing because I don't really want to ever have to interact with... anyone on my campus at all except two of my roommates.
Home is for quiet solitude and social isolation, or just crashing with a handful of people for dinner, a movie or such. Though the flat I inhabit is well suited for somewhat larger parties, there are plenty of better venues for that sort of stuff.
> just crashing with a handful of people for dinner, a movie or such.
But what if this is the social life you want all the time?
I'm saying that home is very often too much oriented toward "quiet solitude and social isolation" rather than the above.