The first week of my senior year was the most subdued New Student Week I have ever experienced. Oddly enough, it was also the first few days of living in my very own apartment. Woohoo? You see, now my time is spent having to actually cook (beyond Ramen and popcorn in my dorm or frat microwave, that is).

Why do we, Northwestern students, decide to live off campus? Because it’s cheaper or more convenient? So far, it’s seemed a hell of a lot less convenient: Apartments are farther away from class, foodless and you have to scrub your own shower.

It’s true: Living off campus adds a lot of unwelcome responsibility to the mix. “It’s harder to keep up with your chores and classes, [it] preps you for life,” said Vanessa Lee, a Weinberg senior. Cameron Gibson, a Communications junior, also has a hard time dealing with bills and chores, the “little stuff that [he’s] never had to worry about before.” As for myself, I have to admit, doing dishes, taking out the trash, furnishing your apartment, paying your cable, internet, utility bills… it’s all more overwhelming than you can imagine before move-in day. Laundry seemed like a pain in the ass in the dorms. But on your own, the responsibilities are like laundry on crack when everything else isn’t already taken care of for you.

But at Northwestern, where apartments are the antonym of dorms (and therefore the synonym of cool), moving out of university housing is just the way we roll. By senior or junior year, and sometimes as early as sophomore year, many of us find ourselves with our own pad west of Sheridan. “Once you’ve lived in a dorm or Greek house for two or three years, it’s time to move on,” said Lee.

Many people say it’s stifling to stay on campus beyond their sophomore year, and moving off campus is our way of declaring we’re ready to leave the babying environment of university housing. “There’s more freedom, more food choices” in living off campus, Gibson said.

Mark Underhill, Communications senior, who got his own apartment his sophomore year, has found that living in the real world lends itself to new levels of social liberation. “There’s no RA or security guard, less authority. My friends and I just wanted to get out of the dorms – [it] makes throwing parties easier, too.” It’s true: When you have a house or apartment to yourself, your social life can finally be in tune with your personality without the pesky constraints of university housing rules.

Maybe some of us move off campus because we want to assert that we’re freewheeling adults, under the ruse that it’s more “convenient.” But signing an apartment lease isn’t the key to maturity. Rather, it’s the experience of actually living on your own that turns you into an adult, whether you’re ready for it or not. Living off campus might not be more convenient, but maybe our compulsion to assert our independence ends up being good for us. If college is life on training wheels, living off campus is a bike with one of the training wheels screwed off. Then you graduate, and you hope that you have enough balance to ride it out.

Photo by Aaron M on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.