I was granted the opportunity to live off-campus with two of my closest friends as a second-year, when Northeastern requires first and second-years to live on-campus. You would imagine that having your own apartment would only comes with benefits. However, this was not the case.
Pros:
- I have my own bedroom and privacy.
- We have a kitchen, so we can make anything we want and it can be delicious based on our culinary skills, which I want to improve on.
- My roommates are close friends of mine and can be trusted.
Cons:
- The apartment wasn’t furnished, so we have to purchase a lot of furniture, which is quite costly.
- Our dish washer flooded the first time we used it.
- My closet hanging bar and shelf broke apart and fell to the ground in the middle of the night when I wanted to sleep peacefully (there were only empty boxes and light clothes on the shelf and bar).
- Our neighbors on the floor above us are extremely loud nearly everyday and even louder on weekends, and we have to constantly tell them to quiet down.
- The terrain in our area is mainly steep hills, which can be quite tiring to go up and down sometimes.
- The walk to campus and back isn’t too bad; however, it if were to rain or snow, it would suck.
- We had trouble with wifi/cable wiring, as our landlord told us we can use any wifi we want, but the building was only fixated towards one wifi company.
- I’m having trouble managing our utilities accounts, as the utility companies and our landlord are creating confusion around it.
In the end, I didn’t expect there to be so many conflicts with getting an apartment for the first time. There are a lot more cons than pros than I had expected, but it is only the first month, so I understand. Though, it is a hassle to deal with these problems.
