This is for the bored folks. My wonderfully crafted honors paper discussing a debate within one of my many communities...
Everyone at sometime has felt hot. In the same right, everyone has also felt what it’s like to be cold. Normally people become hot during the summer months and cold during the winter. Any time in between anything can occur, but when the season is definite, there are usually standards that most people go by as to the range in which the indoor temperature should be away from the extremes of the outdoors. The vast majority of us use the heater in the winter and the air in the summer. Now, I knew when I came to college that I would meet students with views totally different from my own. I did not, however, expect to find those who like to use the air conditioner all year long. I’ve always simply assumed that everyone (in our region) used their air conditioners in the summer and their heaters in the winter. I have been proven wrong by my suitemates, who seem to like it cold inside all year long. My roommate and I are both cold natured, but this has nothing to do with the fact that we like to be warm inside during the winter. We simply realize that one should be able to come in out of the cold and feel at home in her dorm room. This may seem like an unimportant argument, but it has actually caused many problems that can greatly hinder a college student’s progress. It simply should not be cold inside during winter.
Our tiny suite is comprised of just four small rooms—a living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. Marissa and I share one bedroom while two other freshman girls share the other. There is but one thermostat that controls the temperature in all four rooms, which would be perfectly fine if we all preferred the same temperature. That would be an ideal situation. However, living with new people who have different tastes, opinions, and wants is many times anything but ideal. It is possible for a great number of situations to arise in which the parties involved have different opinions. There can be problems involving the right to a certain space, decorating, guests, volume of television and radio, cleanliness, and a host of others.
Problems such as these require compromise. If compromise is not attained, the community will eventually fall apart. Compromise can involve many forms of communication, often in great amounts. With this sort of communication we run the risk of confrontation. We must learn how to make this confrontation positive, thus arriving at a compromise. Marissa and I are extremely non-confrontational and have simply been suffering in our situation rather than attempt to compromise with our suitemates. We are instead riding on the fact that this school year will be over soon, and we will be back home where our families know how to control a thermostat. We realize that this is not the most effective way to handle our problem, but we also do not believe we could compromise with our suitemates. I do not wish to explain how to compromise. I only wish to defend the claim that it should not be could inside, especially in a college dorm. It is simply not a proper environment.
The cold state of our room affects many things, including ability to feel ready to face the world. My hands are so cold in the mornings that I do not even want to put on makeup. This may seem like a trivial point, but with a face like mine, makeup is quite necessary for any kind of interpersonal contact. I had acne for about four years, and at that time no one would want to look at me without a bit of makeup to cover it. Now that my acne is gone, it has been replaced by scars that will probably not go away for years. I still have to have makeup to cover my unsightly face, but it is quite difficult to even touch my face when my hands feel as if they’ve been sitting in a bucket of ice water for ten minutes. Now even when I do feel brave enough to put on makeup, I do a very poor job of it as I rush to get the icicles off my face. Also, because the cold causes chill bumps and chill bumps cause the hair on my legs to grow quickly, I am forced to shave too often. Even if I shave every day my legs lack their usual smoothness. When I step out of the shower and chill bumps have already formed, I feel like not shaving at all, which is usually what ends up happening.
Everyone knows that college changes people, and that it is usually for the better. However, there is one good thing about me that has changed for the worse. I have always been a morning person, which I see as a very desirable trait. I have begun to lose my desire to wake in the early hours of the morn. It is quite difficult to get out of bed when I know I will have to face the cold air. I usually go to bed feeling cold but warm up as I lie beneath my many covers. I like to wake early in the morning so I can go over the things we will be discussing in my morning classes so they will be fresh in my memory and I will be more apt to learn, but more and more I find myself hitting the snooze button just so I can stay warm for nine more minutes. I no longer pop up out of bed at 5:30 ready to face the day. I now wait until all I have to do is take a hot shower and rush out the door as quickly as possible so as to escape the proverbial igloo in which I live.
Everyone knows that people get sick more often in the winter, usually with the flu, bronchitis, and many colds. For me this is true because I cannot escape the cold air that weakens my poor immune system. Last semester I was sick with a respiratory infection for more than a month because of this. I actually became ill when winter started and instead of coming out of the cold into the warmth, I came in to even more chilly air. This was something I simply was not used to and did not believe others were, either. What’s the point of coming inside during the winter if I am going to be just as cold inside as I would be outside? I might as well just stay outside in the fresh cold air than go inside to the stale cold air. I can become ill either way and would rather do it outside with nature. Now, I realize that it was probably not the state of our room that caused my sickness, but it certainly did not help cure it. My over-worked immune system continues to battle the cold, as I have had more colds this year than I have the last four years of my life. More often than not this year I have had a cold, and I cannot wait until spring comes and I am once again healthy. My roommate has also had health problems because of the coldness of our room. We have been friends since the seventh grade, and I know for a fact that she is not used to getting sick, either. She has also been sick many times this year. Moreover, when she gets a cold, she snores a lot more than usual, and because she usually falls asleep before me, I am kept awake longer than I would desire. In this case I’ve got the cold and Farsheshe’s (that would be Marissa to the rest of the world) thunderously loud snoring to keep me from that beautiful thing that is sleep.
The cold does in fact keep me awake at night. I usually cannot fall asleep until my body has warmed up, which takes a very long time even though I am under a sheet, a comforter, and three extra blankets, one of which is down, the warmest kind to which I have been exposed. This delay of sleep could also contribute to the difficulty I have getting up in the mornings. When 5:30 comes around I have had less sleep than I normally would have even though I went to bed at my usual time. Many nights I have even been reduced to throwing the covers over my head and breathing heavily inside my cocoon in an attempt to warm myself up quicker, but to no avail. The cold remains, as does my wakefulness. The cold also greatly affects how well my schoolwork is done. As I sit at my desk doing homework, the chill bumps come and set up house. It is extremely difficult for me to work when I am that uncomfortable. Concentrating on the assigned Honors reading is next to impossible when I’m thinking about how cold and uncomfortable I am, especially since the air vent is right above my desk and there is nowhere else to put the desk. I even get sore sometimes from shivering too much. I also have to add many layers of clothing in attempt to get just a small bit of warmth, which gets really bothersome, as it is hard to move while wearing two shirts and a heavy coat. In this case, I can either be extremely cold, or I can be sore, irritated, and a little less cold. And because I have already lost sleep, I feel my eyes start trying to close, as I get about halfway through the reading. In fact, to write this very paper to the best of my ability, I had to leave what should be my “home away from home” to find a comfortable environment.
A person’s dorm room is essentially her home while she is at college, but Baridon 227 does not feel like a home at all. I like everything about our suite except for the air situation, which is enough to destroy everything else. The place is nicely decorated and is kept quite clean by my roommate and myself, but it is uninviting simply because it is too cold. This makes me even more ready to leave Conway on the weekends in search of warmth. I feel unwanted and unwelcome in my own “home.”
I would be totally willing to compromise with my suitemates if such a thing were at all possible, but I am beginning to think that this will never happen. One morning as I was trying to get ready for the day, one of my suitemates woke up just to talk with me about the problem. Apparently she was hot, even though I was quite chilly. She said she wanted to make a compromise, but by the end of the conversation I felt that she walked away with the thought that my roommate and I were never to turn on the heat, even though there was frost on the ground. That was about a month ago, and since then we have only had the heat on twice, while our suitemates were not even in the room, yet the air has been on at least three times a day. This doesn’t sound like much of a compromise. Many times they come in, turn on the air, stay for ten minutes and leave without being considerate enough to turn the air off. Once when it was below freezing outside, both girls came in after working out and turned it on. Now, I realize that people do get hot after that kind of physical activity, but is one not supposed to cool down gradually after a workout? They are also hot natured, which I try to take into account in this situation, but I was hot natured the entire time I was in junior high, and I can say that I would rather be hot natured than cold natured. It is irritatingly painful to be cold. It is only irritating to be hot. Marissa and I have told them many times that they could open a window when they are hot, much like we did during the summer when it was also cold inside. We took into account the fact that most people like it cool in the summer and let them turn on the air while we stayed warm in our room beside our open window. It would only be fair for them to do the same. My roommate and I hate confrontation and have tried to be very considerate. Every time we happen to casually mention our indignation, we are shot down without any reason except, “It’s hot in here,” and the debate is never resolved.
Because I hate confrontation, this has been a great way for me to get my feelings out there. Perhaps there are others in the same dire situation. I can only hope that they all, at this moment, are in a more comfortable, work-ready, home-like environment. I, however, must now go find another jacket.
seashell
