Pieces of BGSU

After three years of living on campus in a tiny room, eating at the same dining hall every day, waking up in the middle of the night to fire alarms and walking about a mile to get to my car, I was MORE than ready to move off campus. So I moved into an apartment with my girlfriend.

We decided on University Village Apartments. Finding a place in the FIRST place was difficult enough. I let her do most of the searching since she knew a little more about apartment living than I did. In BG, there’s a couple of well-known off-campus living options including Copper Beach, the Enclave, etc. These places usually house four to eight students in a small, town-house style place. They seem pretty cool, but they’re pretty expensive and you have to find people you could live with for a year. It’s hard enough living with one other person. Also, they’re not within walking distance to campus and with some of them, you have to pay for water and sometimes even gas.
     So we looked at other places. There are some places on the other side of Main Street that are like upper stories to houses or over shops that are reallyyyy cheap for the month, but cheap doesn’t necessarily mean good. So we went with somewhere a little more expensive, but close to campus and dependable. University Village has air conditioning (which is not TOTALLY necessary in Bowling Green, but I come from a household where my mom likes keeping things less than 65 degrees). It also has a dishwasher and stove, utilities (except electric) included and really nice furnished units available. Coming from Baltimore, MD, I really needed a furnished unit. I can’t be expected to move furniture nine hours on top of the rest of the stuff I need for school.
     Moving in was horrifying! It was so great to get all this space to ourselves, but moving in was such a process. We put things in a storage unit in Toledo for the summer to make it a little easier, but we still had to go to Toledo and then carry things up a flight of steps to put it in the apartment. Thank goodness we are only on the second floor! I may be biased, but I think we have the coolest place of all our friends who also moved off campus!
     We’ve only been here for about five days, and I feel like I’m already having slight campus-withdrawal. I don’t miss the room. I don’t miss the dining hall. I don’t miss the noise. But I miss rolling out of bed and getting to class in ten minutes. I miss having a friend right next door. I miss the Arts Village, where people sing in the hallways and there’s always something going on down in the basement. I feel a little out of the loop with my friends since they’re not right down the hall.
      I would never take back living on campus the first two years. It was a great experience and I met lots of people and really grew to love campus. But I think moving off was actually a really smart idea. It’s nice to have my car parked right outside the building. It’s REALLY nice being able to shop for myself and being encouraged to eat healthier by grocery shopping. And it’s even NICER to have so much space. A lot of people will preach for living on campus or preach for living off– but I say, “Do both! You won’t regret either.”