Sophie Defaix
Staff Writer

While I am writing this article, it’s exactly two more months till I go back to the Netherlands. I will miss a lot of things and campus life is definitely one of them.

Campus life doesn’t exist in the Netherlands. All our universities are located in the major cities and you either stay home and travel back and forth every day or you find an apartment in the city itself.

Here, I often hear people complain about the food, the rooms and the walk to classes, but campus life is ideal. Everything is close. The students who live in Gaige always complain how far it is to get everywhere, but a twenty-minute walk is really not that bad. There is even a bus driving around all day!

Try to imagine that you have to travel two hours by train to get to the university and two hours to get back home, every day. People actually do that. And even if you live in the city itself, it still takes some students a half-hour bike ride. Yes, we bike a lot in the Netherlands, also when it rains. Compared to that, a twenty-minute walk is not that bad, right?

mi_studentlife_orgOne of the things I like most about campus life is the fact that all your friends are so close. You can walk down the hallway and knock on your friend’s door. I will really have to get used to bike (again!) to the other side of the city to see my friends, instead of walking down the hallway. It is a lot easier to hang out with your friends, when you live on the same campus. You can grab something to eat whenever you want to, because everyone eats at the same places.

This brings me to my third point: campus food. It may not always be as good as what your mother cooks for you, but they do the best they can. Could you imagine having to cook dinner for the 2300 students that live on campus? I can’t even cook and that needs to change soon.

Next year, I will have to do grocery shopping and cook for myself every day and I can’t even boil spaghetti. Eating on campus is not just convenient, but it is also a lot less expensive. The amount of money we pay for dining here seems a lot, but having to buy groceries every week is a lot more expensive.

And honestly, is the food that bad here? College Prowler did a research on campus food in Pennsylvania and Millersville University got ranked 25th out of the 101 universities that participated in their study. Our food got 7.6 out of 10 and that’s not bad for a relatively small, state school.

I just want to say that you should all enjoy campus life, because it is so much fun and very convenient. I know that I had a fantastic experience with campus life and I hope it taught me at least a few thing that could be helpful when I try to survive next year all by myself. College life is fantastic and living on campus only makes it better.