mymodernmet.com: Back-to-school season is officially upon us. With more dorm-approved decor readily available now more than ever (think, removable wallpaper, tiered storage trolleys, and stylish floating shelves), tweaking your tiny, temporary space to work for you is finally a feasible undertaking.
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As someone from the United States, you are passed down the expectation from past students that your dorm rooms will be stuffy, ugly and something you just have to deal with until you get the funds for off campus housing. Looking at these examples from around the world, I feel mildly jealous that their housing not only shelters them, but works with them to make their campus life as easy as possible. I can't complain that much because my dorm room gives me a safe place to sleep, but there is no "contemporary minimalism" or a "refreshing mix of hues." However, I do feel slightly inspired, as maybe universities and education programs are amping up the quality of what people are paying for. There has recently been the issue at Purdue (and perhaps other institutions) and their temporary housing issue, where, because they over admitted students, rather than those students receiving a room they, essentially, receive a cubby area located in a more communal setting. Students are paying too much to live in a 2 x 2 cinder block area. So in that regard, I commend these global institutions for giving students what they paid for.
Of course, I immediately clicked on this article, as I am a first-year college student and this talks about how to create a space that is your own. Moving into my dorm room and away from my real room at home, was something I was nervous and excited about. I love to decorate, but I didn’t like the idea of having to create a new “home”. This article talks about how there’s archetype on dorm rooms in america, but the rooms widely vary from place to place. Colleges in Europe for example are much more innovative with the use of space. Some places concentrate on looks versus practicality and vice versa. While reading this article, I was inspired and given several different ideas of how I can make my room feel mine and comfortable without comprising practicality or aesthetic. I thought it was really interesting to contrast the typical dorm room against unpopular approach. I will definitely refer back to this article when decorating my room further.
This article gave me a great perspective on how students live in other countries around the world. If I’m being completely honest, I had no idea there were schools that provided dorms nicer than the typical American cinder block rooms. It’s not that I think the cinder block dorm are particularly nice, it’s just that I didn’t think it was even possible to have something as nice as these places are. These spaces seem so functional, as well as visually appealing. It makes me wonder why our dorms here in the US are so lacking in both of those qualities (in short, I’m jealous). Do these dorms cost significantly more? Are the schools just newer and thus have more era-fitting facilities? Of course any dorm, especially plain ones in the US, can be made more unique and presentable based on how much effort/money the student living there puts into it. The catch is that decorating a dorm requires a good amount of effort and even more money, so not a lot of people opt to do it.
I am a product of a cinder block dorm room. Nothing ever stayed on the walls. I had a thin cork strip running down two sides of my tiny single person room on the 12th floor of my dorm building. It was also painted a hideous shade of blue. I guess it was ok. I was not often to be found in my room. I really was only there for sleeping and the occasional study time. I feel like, looking at the photos posted, that European students have it better than we do and we are supposed to be the country that every other country admires but yet seem to be the country that got left behind. Colleges and Universities are ever increasing their tuition charges but are not changing the way that they integrate into the lives of students. Yes, we want the latest in technology to pursue our ever changing career goals, but we also want to be able to sleep in a comfortable place that is like a second home for us, not a place that feels like a waiting room inside of a government building. Colleges need to up their housing game. I don’t need new fancy food options, I miss the curly fries. Same with housing, implode the building, build some parking and give us a better, more functional, second home space.
This article makes me feel like America is a third-world country more than ever. All of these international dorm rooms would enhance my focus and overall wellbeing. When I consider that America doesn’t structurally prioritize education and that college over here is a company first and foremost, it makes sense why these dorms are so upscale. These countries care about education in a way that still churns out workers, but they at least care about pedagogy and national education. I don’t look up to American higher education at all, but I think this article could definitely have people think that the Nordic model is some kind of post-racist utopia where education there solves the problems in America. Even if the Nordic countries aren’t featured here, there’s always this blind idolization of European countries that historically and politically play into the problems that we talk about in America.
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