Making that transition from your parents’ cozy house to the new lifestyle that the dorms bring can be challenging. That move will often be one of the most intense moves of our lives because it is, more often than not, our first big move. Suddenly, our parents’ house seems like a mansion and we look back nostalgically on mom’s home cooked meals that now seem gourmet.

The quality of the Dining Commons food seems to come in waves. “It was good for the first couple of weeks then it got old ’cause it was the same crap over and over,” said Jordan Hunter, a freshman resident in Sierra Hall.

Hunter, a Sacramento State football player originally from Clovis, Ca., tries to take the good with the bad when it comes to life in the dorms.

“The environment of the dorms is good because there are a variety of people and that is what makes it fun,” Hunter said.

Getting to meet new people is the largest attribute of dorm life and many people’s friendships inevitably begin when they live down the hall from one another in the dorms. Dorm staff, also known as RAs, spends much of their time trying to generate interaction between the residents.

“There are a lot of group activities. I have made a lot of friends,” Hunter noted appreciatively.

Like many residents in the dorms, Hunter seems to enjoy the social aspect that the dorms offer but is quite perturbed with other aspects.

“The parking sucks,” Hunter said. “The stalls in the back are little as hell and sometimes I have to park far and I don’t like to leave my truck way out there, I like it closer to my building.”

He suggests making more parking behind Sierra and Sutter Hall where there are only faculty parking spots that never get filled.

On such a big commuter college, Sac State is doomed to have bad parking. But parking isn’t the only thing that irritates Hunter and his fellow residents.

Dorm life wouldn’t be dorm life if those notoriously ill-timed fire alarms didn’t go off right as we were about to get that much-needed rest.

“Another thing I hate about the dorms would have to be the fire alarms,” Hunter said. “They pick the worst times. I will be almost asleep and then they will have a drill.”

Although content with most of his stay in the dorms, when asked if he’d stay another year in Sierra Hunter responded, “Hell no, one year is enough in the dorms-actually I think one semester is enough.”

It seems these things, both good and bad, such as dining option, close friendships, parking and fire drills are just the ups and downs of college life in the dorms.

Chelsea Follett can be reached at [email protected].

To read last week’s dorm diaries click here.