College Dorms

It's August and there is no lack of college move-in day posts on social media. New roommates posing for a picture, images of cars stuffed full with belongings, and photographs of neat dorm room halves with cute pillows on the bed and trinkets on the desk. To foreigners though this phenomena is strange. Since when is college boarding school? The students are adults now—isn't it time they go out into the world and find an apartment to rent and learn to cook their own dinners? But no, that's not how it works in the "land of the free." At most colleges Freshman are required to either live at home with parents who cook for them, or to live in dorms on campus where people are paid cook for them.

And that's not the only strange part of the dorm phenomena. The word "dorm" is short for "dormity," a word that originated from the Latin "dormire," which means "to sleep." Ask any college student what sleep is, and all you'll get is a blank stare for an answer. Maybe an alphabet class should be added to the list of required General Ed because I don't think a single one of them has ever made it to their Zzzzzs.