From Halls to Hell

Why is anyone ever eager to leave halls? Sure, the university says you have to but that doesn't mean you have to like it. You should be dragged out of your room by security on the last day of term, leaving a trail of salty tearstains and splintered pieces of fingernail in the carpet. Instead, many students seem only too keen to leave the warm comfort of halls behind and set out to live in the cold dark world of student housing.

While applying for halls simply involved listing your preferences on a form ('single room, en suite bathroom, close to uni' – done), finding a house is hard. First you need to create a small band of people you think you can bear to live with, which often consists of a slightly odd friend from halls, a person you know less well but secretly fancy and a third person who you don't know at all but is best friends with your secret crush so you kindly agree that they can live with you.

Next you actually have to go and look around possible houses, usually on a cold rainy afternoon, trying to find a place in that Goldilocks zone close enough to university to be only mildly inconvenient but far enough out of the funzone to be within your miniscule price-range. And when you finally find a house you're all happy with it turns out that some other flock has stolen it from under your snotty nose and you have to start the dreary process all over again.

Living in a student house is always worse than living in halls. You may have thought you'd get more space but after playing Russian roulette to decide who gets which room you find that you now have to sleep in a cupboard that Harry Potter would have thought was small, while your secret heartthrob's stupid best friend has a room which takes up a whole floor with a double bed and an en suite.

Suddenly you find you that on top of rent you have to pay for your electricity, your gas, your internet, all of which will stop working on the one snowy Sunday evening you have an assignment due. Of course you also have to pay for your TV license and your own food, a special shock reserved for those who have lived in catered halls.

And it isn't as though you have more privacy as you still have to share a bathroom and a kitchen, only this time it's not just with strangers you can ignore but with housemates who you like less and less with every passing moment but still have to talk to. The only way you learn to differentiate between them is by odour. 

Essentially living in a student house means you're colder, poorer, hungrier and further away from wherever you need to be than you were before. Maybe you're more independent but you're also more miserable. And that's how it's going to stay.