What is dorm Life like?

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Im in transition come august to move from a community college to university because im graduating from the community college. Ive never lived away from home before so i don't know what to expect from a dorm. Any thoughts?

Woooo! College! <chug> Woooo! <puke>

Something like that.

Probably the only thing that can be said for sure is, "It will probably be different."

• Find out if the dorm rooms are furnished, and to what extent
• Figure out where the washing facilities are and what's required to use them (cash cards, coins, free-of-charge because the dormitory is considered secured from outsiders, etc.)
• Figure out where to eat, how far it is, whether you might need a vehicle and just how far you'll travel on it.
• As above, but for groceries (if you intend to keep any)
• If you find out you're going to live in close proximity with someone (roommate, flatmate, etc.), if the university's housing arrangements permit prospective flatmates to contact each other before moving, do so. Find out a bit about the people you might be sharing a dorm with for a term.

Hated dorm life. I couldn't take the noise and the constant random social encounters with roommates and hallmates. There was a lot of partying and general chaos which was overly taxing on my sensory system. I couldn't sleep or study and I was miserable. I felt like I had to drive home every weekend to escape. I transferred to another school where I didn't have to live in the dorms and found a quiet place to live off campus. Find your own off campus apartment if possible. If not, I'd recommend going to school closer to home. Then again, this is just me. Some Aspies seem to handle dorm life a lot better. You may want to try it out for yourself and see how you do. If you dislike it, you can always leave the dorms.

Depends on your personality and the dorm you get into. My school didn't have much of a dorm experience for transfers and we were placed in apt style dorms. More privacy but less "roommate bonding". So for me it was boring. Campus apartments in my experience were louder and wilder.

Be prepared to meet new people and respect their personal space and things. They may be louder or quieter than you or messier or cleaner. Try to communicate in the beginning with them about things so there will be less problems later on. And get a mini fridge even if you're in an apt style place because people eating your food when you pay for it really sucks.

Make sure to be able to join in some night evening college club activities. Like I meetup with the anime club, the bboys, the japanese club, the gamers club.
All accessible to visit whenever i want since I'm nearby (on campus).

not to scare you but dorm life is awful. its loud (the other kids never sleep, and the RA's don't enforce the quiet hours), it smells (pot smoke came through the vents in my bathroom), and the people just suck (i had two "friends" (i'm still not sure if they're my friends or not) and my roommate was a loud, disrespectful, confrontational, pothead, b***h that had her friends coming into our room all the time, and she even had sex in our room, i wasn't there when it started but when she locked me out of the room and when i nearly kick the door in she answered half naked!)
it sucks. live off campus, go to a local school and stay with your parents, just don't live in a dorm if you care about your sanity and privacy.

As with firstchance, I hate to scare you.
But...it's true. If your dorm experience is anything like mine, at least. Even if your roommate is okay (a big IF), not everyone else will be. I had people in my room at all hours, making noise. I had a girl from across the hall steal things from my roomie and myself and deny it straight to our faces. I had girls across the hall SCREAMING all the time because the dorm was too hot or too cold or something. People will steal your laundry from machines. People will steal food from you. No one ever obeys the quiet hours. And did I mention the bathroom sharing? Nothing like standing there in a towel brushing your teeth while being judged by everyone on the floor who needs to pee. If at all possible, get a single. There are some who'll say it won't make that big of a difference, but think about it like this: if you have to live in a dorm, you at least want to be the only one with a key to your belongings. If you have a double it's not just the roommate, it's the roommate's sketchy friends and acquaintances. It might seem like you're missing out on the typical college experience, but a few weeks in you'll realize that you're quite close enough to all the action.
Just saying all this so you can be prepared. I was utterly floored when I realized that this was the norm.

As you've probably noticed from the replies so far, lots of different possibilities, lots of those are situational.

As before, figure out what you need to complete the mechanics of staying alive (air, food, water, clean clothes, abundant supplised), and anything specific that you need (lots of quiet space, lots of solitude, etc.). You may have to play the rest by ear.

if you've got documentation, quite a few colleges will treat a single room as an accommodation that a person on the spectrum needs; go talk with the disabilities office. Also, you could ask if there's a "quiet" floor or dorm anywhere on campus - some schools have those for people who don't want their living space to be crazy (you can always go out for crazy!).

Yea I hate to scare you too but dorm life for me was god aweful,and i recomend it to no one. My roomates hated me because i never wanted to do anything with them(which mostly included drinking all day and doing lines of coke all night). They steal your s**t (mine had the balls to take an entire bottle of my adhd medication abuse some of it and sell the rest) And its especially terrible for you if you get stuck with freshmen and you older and farther ahead than they, because most straight out of highschool kids act like they are the s**t when its far from the truth. My advice to you is stay out of them as much as possible. Find groups on campus to do stuff, and find a quiet place in the library or student union to spend you free time or study.

If you can, try finding an apartment off campus. I'm in the same boat as the poster of this topic is and that's what I'm going to do. Whether it's an autism thing or not, I do like my privacy at the end of the day. I, too, am graduating from a community college in a few months and will be transitioning to a university. Dorms, personally, are a big turn off for me. For Christ's sake, my bathroom is bigger than the dorms I've seen. So talk about kissing your personal space and privacy goodbye if you choose a dorm.

1. Depending on how far you are from your house or whatnot, keep all your valuables there. My first year living in the dorms, someone broke into my suite ( 4 rooms sharing a bathroom, 2 people to a room) and stole a guy's computer. Also, I was stupid to leave my car door unlocked and had my phone and textbooks stolen..

2. I have seen people take as long as 10-20 minutes just to take a shower or take a piss. I myself have never went over 7-8 minutes for a shower..

3. Watch your laundry. People can and will take your things out and throw them to a nearby table if it's sitting too long in a washer/dryer..