At the end of my junior year, a few friends and I decided we were ready to move off-campus. The dorms are great and quite convenient in terms of being able to roll out of bed and make it to class within five minutes, but we were ready to gain a little independence.
So we found a house a few minutes off-campus. We have a porch and a freezer filled with gelato and a living room for gatherings. We also have possums in the attic and pipes that froze during the cold of the winter, but those are stories for another time.
Welcome to the real world.
A kitchen to cook in, the freedom to have gatherings and parties and to sit on the front porch eating breakfast—living off-campus has been everything my roommates and I hoped it would be, and more. But aside from the benefits of being able to pack a few more people into a room without an RA knocking on the door—though in this case the stakes are a little higher because a knock on the door is usually the neighbors, followed by the cops—there are quite a few tangible benefits of living off-campus during senior year.
First of all, the cost. By cooking at home, I save at least $400 from the lowest meal plan—which on West Campus runs about $2000 for the year—because I can buy groceries for less than $200 per month. That’s more budget I have for eating out on the weekends or grabbing food on campus when it’s more convenient and I’m too lazy to cook—which is often.
Rent and utilities are also major cost-savers. For most people I know, these expenses run in the $650 to $700 range per month. Even at the high end of that range—mine is much further below that at about $550—that’s a savings of about $2000 from a single on West, which runs about $8600 for the year—and more if you add in the air conditioning.
But almost as important as the cost-savings themselves is the simple act of keeping track of bills. Many of us haven’t had to pay for most of our living expenses before now, and even those of us like myself, who have been paying our Duke bill all along, can be mislead by the complexity of making payments. Sure I’ve been paying for my food—in the form of on-campus food points which often feel like monopoly money—and housing—in the form of a tiny double in the back corner of Edens—but those costs all come bundled up in one little number at the bottom of my bill.
The real world is, unfortunately, much less straightforward. Remember that stretch of a few weeks when the temperatures dipped into the negatives and no matter how much you cranked up the heater you still felt cold? Bank account cringed. That time you got sick for weeks on end and in the end you paid over $100 for prescriptions and antibiotics? Bank account cringed. That time you went grocery shopping for a week’s worth of food that got consumed in three days of midterms stress? Needless to say, the bank account feels the brunt of it.
Living off-campus has been a reality check into the unexpected twists, turns and expenses of life that we never quite saw in our tuition bill or the tuition bill that automatically gets forwarded to Mom or Dad. Nothing will make you miss the convenience of a lump-sum bill or those helping hands until your January utilities bill comes around in the mail.
While feeling the burden of the ups and downs of daily living expenses isn’t always easy, it gives us a better idea of how to best manage our funds and cut costs where we can—it makes for an easier transition to the world further off-campus. And let’s be honest, nothing will make you grow up faster than setting up the water bill, calling the plumber for your frozen pipes, and killing all the cockroaches on your own.
This senior year version of the the real world is, I should add, the greatest slice of life I’ve ever experienced. The independence of having your own place, the freedom to rent black lights and convert your living room into a glow party, and the fun of getting to be in college for just a little bit longer. Because regardless of the heating bill and the frozen pipes and the possum in the attic—RIP little guy—the real, real world out there doesn’t seem nearly as fun.
Julia Janco is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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