A Jerk Declassified Dorm Survival Guide

Graphics by Anika Dua

It’s only October— less than two months into the fall semester and Dellplain has officially had five fire alarms. Some of them have been back to back. As someone who has been traumatized by the alarm sounding in my sleep and being blinded by the lights in the darkness of my room, I think it is high time we get down to the root of the issue.

Since I am sooooo much older than the current freshmen at SU (only a sophomore in school), I realize now that it isn’t our fault, but SU’s fault. There is no preparation for incoming freshmen to come onto campus and be adults for the first time.

So where SU fails, I will pick up and hopefully this advice can prevent the sleep cycles of many in my dorm and the other dorms from being interrupted any further.

First rule of thumb: popcorn. We all love microwavable popcorn, especially for those long movie nights. The only problem is that a lot of people might forgo the instructions (no judgment here!) and overcook the popcorn in the bag. At that point, it’s no longer pop but burnt corn that you can smell down multiple hallways in your building. It is recommended that you microwave for 2 ½ to 3 minutes. Anything over that is obviously murder and you will be hanging your head with shame when you see the burnt remainders in the bag.

Second rule of thumb: microwaving other foods. For the love of all things holy, metal can’t go in the microwave. Trust me, I have made that mistake before. It will not be good. If you can’t tell it’s metal, then it’s probably best to not put it in the microwave just to be safe. If it’s plastic then you’re all good. And please don’t mix metal up with anything else and then put the food on a higher setting. That will be even worse. If you can’t tell, google will be your best friend at college so don’t be ashamed to ask. Better to be ashamed about google than be ashamed about causing those blasted alarms to go off.

Third and final rule of thumb: we’re not in high school anymore. Trust me, I went through that adjusting phase. You might feel mischievous and want to ‘fit in’ to the friend groups you’re obviously going to want to stick to. But please for the love of everything, leave the fire alarms out of it. Honestly it’s getting too much hate from the students, and I think if it goes any longer, something dangerous is gonna happen. Interrupting the sleep of college students is dangerous on all sides. So keep your mischievous deeds outside of igniting flames and testing what makes the alarms go off.

Anyways, there’s probably more rules to get through but if you can follow these three then you’re golden for your freshman year. Trust me there is no judgment from my side. I only write from the place of someone who has almost had multiple heart attacks from being woken up by the alarms at 1 in the morning. I write for the thousands of students in my building and other dorms that have had to go through this and multiple alarms in one day. So enjoy the rest of the school year everyone and I pray that we are (all) able to maintain uninterrupted rests.