Here’s six tips for making your stay in Ptarmigan Hall enjoyable.

1. Make sure you have a good roommate

Your room is your home, your place to get away from everyone. You’re going to have to get close to your roommates if you want to be comfortable in your own room. So the best choice is to get to know them and be friendly with them. If you don’t like who you are roomed with and you’ve tried your best to get along with them or just don’t feel comfortable around them, there is always room switches which you can do in a couple weeks.

Survival tip: If you know anyone that is staying at the dorms, ask if they want to be your roommate so you don’t have to go through the struggle. (Or you could make new friends and be roommates with someone new.)

2. Keep your room clean

If you keep your room clean at the dorms then they pay you a dollar every day. They keep adding it up and every week they give you your money, called incentive pay. You can either get it every week or save it up and wait to get it. If you do community chores, which you can sign up for on Thursday mornings at 5, then you get more money.

Survival Tip: If you keep your room clean all the time the RA’s will think that your room is always clean and if you have to get checked off for a clean room for something then they will sign it off right there and not have to go all the way to your room to inspect it.

3. Bring food

Make sure you bring food, because the Dining hall doesn’t always serve food that you like. The class periods are an hour and thirty minutes, and I’m pretty sure you would get hungry before its lunch time, so it’s always good to bring snacks. Also its good to have snacks that isn’t fruit, the dining hall gives out snacks but it’s mostly just fruit and cereal, and to be honest I wouldn’t like having fruit and cereal for snacks every day when I’m hungry.

Survival Tip: Don’t share with your roommate because then the food will get eaten up fast.

4. Make the right friends

You’re going to want to make the right friends because you are most likely going to be hanging out with them a lot. You don’t want a friend that annoys you or a friend that has the opposite personality as you. The right friends are the people you just vibe with, they don’t give off negative vibes or anything.

Survival tip: Make a lot of friends, but have a few best friends that you hang out with more than your friends.

5. Decorate your room

Make your room feel homey so that you don’t feel home sick as much. When you first get to the dorms they don’t look that good, and it make you automatically miss home. When you decorate it and make it feel like your room at home it will get a lot better. You could like print out pictures and then hang them up, or hang up your drawings, just anything to make you feel at home.

Survival tip: Christmas lights make your room like 100 times better!

6. Get a job or do community chores every week

Having no money at the dorms sucks. So if you get the chance apply for a job at the dining hall, or gym, or the student store so you’ll have money whenever you want to get something at the store or the coffee shop. If you don’t want to get a job then sign up for community chores on Thursday mornings so you can get more than just 9 dollars for your incentive pay.

Survival tip: More money equals fewer problems 