Help My Dorm is Noisy and I Can't Sleep

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I'm a freshman and have to live in the dorms the first year. This was supposed to be a quiet dorm and it is for most of the building. The quiet hours are from 10PM to 10AM but may as well not exist. The RA is useless. She has done nothing about the noise and has skipped out on the hall meetings and other responsibilities. The girls next door to me have people over every single night talking and laughing loudly until 2AM. The wall the bunk bed is against is wall we share. And because the way the room is set up the bed can't be moved away from the noise. They've been asked to be quite by several people (including myself) multiple times and it doesn't make a bit of difference. I tried to be understanding at the beginning but they've made it abundantly clear they don't care whom they inconvenience and I can't be up until two then try to get up for class four hours later. And if it was just them I might be able to work around it but its not. The girls at the opposite end of the hall are drunk, slamming doors, and wandering up and down the hallway yelling half the night too. I already sleep in head phones but their obnoxious high pitched voices cut through everything. All I want is to be able to sleep. I'm so tired and I don't know what to do.

I hate those stupid college rules that require lowerclasspersons to live on campus. Complain to someone higher up than the RA. Do you have any sort of diagnosis that would suggest you need peace and quiet? If so, use it get what you want: either get students to be quieter, or the ability to live somewhere else. Go to the student Disability Services office if necessary.

If you room mate wouldn't mind, try a fan set on low.

You can try some ear plugs. Maybe they'll work a little better than the headphones. Unfortunately I don't know if anyone will listen to the complaints because it is sort of expected/accepted that dorms will be loud. But yeah, dorms are terrible. I remember my freshman year my neighbor would play guitar at 2am sometimes. Then some other guys would light a Frisbee on fire and throw it in the hallway.

Go up the chain with your complaint...to the dean of students if you must.

I went through similar garbage in college. My roommate was a borderline insomniac. The slightest thing kept him up, and he needed complete quiet to sleep. The rules are there for a reason, they must enforce them.

That sounds like a typical dorm. It sucks, and I had to completely alter my sleeping habits. I played video games way late into the night, homework in the library and took naps during the day. It was a struggle at first, but I got used to it. All you can really do is just try to find a way to embrace the night life.

I have the same problem. You cant control other people. You can complain all you want but I know personally that ANY noise is personally very distressing. Even if the RA does eventually intervene the noise level will probably still be too high and people tend to get louder and louder unconsciously.

The only solution is headphones and earplugs combined. Try using simplynoise.com or download the sounds of ocean waves forest sounds etc. These sounds block out all externals and will provide you with an internal sense of calm. The two combined should make you immune. You'll need over ear headphones though.

I agree, go up the chain. And, continue trying.

I would take the stance of trying to get special permission to move out, rather than to get everyone else to be quiet.

This assumes that a) the situation will imrpove b) the situation can be improved. The one thing that MAY make a move a feasible solution is specifically asking for a dorm populated by people who aren't prone to having friends round or parties, but depending on the construction of the building you have to contend with the surrounding floors and buildings. This is student life to be honest - when you sign up for halls of residence/dorms you kind of enter into a compact which says that you will have to deal with this stuff.

You can go to the RA's but be warned that you may end up being called a "snitch", depending on how observant they are they might figure out or assume that you were the culprit and make life difficult. The best bet would be to ask to move. Speak to disability services and get them to expedite the process, but I just want to warn you that it may not solve everything.

I was imagining special permission for a move off-campus. Regular apartments tend to be quieter than dorms.

Ahhh yes of course I forgot that that was an option! It is absolutely quieter. Neighbours can be awkward but often international students are very reserved and solitary at least in my experience. You might be able to find a house populated by international students or you could make a special request. Im not sure how America works but it might be hard to find a house with an empty room since in England the whole house has to be paid for. You'd have to swap rooms I imagine. It can be done though and it would be a significant improvement from experience

Based on my experience in that situation in a quiet dorm that was a single, don't count on anything to change. I had that experience and had to drop out, as I was developing severe sleeping problems (not sleeping for days on end because as luck would having it, I have DSPS and find it almost impossible to sleep during the day). Try to find a way to drown out the noise with earplugs, headphones, music, etc. the best that you can to cope until you can move out to an off-campus apartment. This seriously screwed up my college as the chronic lack of sleep led me to develop highly neurotic and it's taking me years to get back to college well.

I would recommend any autistic person to not live on a college dorm unless they know that they aren't hypersensitive to noise and can easily get to sleep despite loud laughter, walls and floors vibrating from speakers, and similar partying noises that you can expect in a college dorm. I'm sure some colleges will enforce quiet hours, but I would interview actual students living in the quiet dorms before trusting that a college takes a policy seriously. (And also to get a feel for if the person you're talking to is one of the party animals or loud insomniacs - what time do they usually fall asleep, how often do you hear music or talking or laughter through the walls, how late do they usually hear the noises last until, are there parties at night very often, etc.)

I went through this two semesters ago.
The noise, the lights, the smell... all of it was horrible. Every Wednesday and Friday night, there was a large party in the dorm and on the quad, the hall would be packed to the point where my door was wedged shut by people and it would shudder at their movements. They would spill beer that would leak into my room. Music so loud that I thought my ears were bleeding, not including the shouting and screaming. The lights were intense, so intense.

Near the end of the semester I called the (campus) police on them, which was ineffective, they did nothing to break it up. And I was then forced out of the school. Even if they didn't force me out, some of the other students found out I called the cops on them... and they had begun roughing me up.

My advice:
Do what it takes to sleep.
Keep trying to work things out with higher authorities than the RA, work up the chain.
Try to get off campus.

I have this problem with my apartment. My brain will also go crazy for 2 hours before actually letting me fall asleep. I'll be laying in bed unable to go to sleep, with racing thoughts for 2 hours or longer. Noises from outside disturb my sleep, too. I do sleep with a teddy bear as a comfort object. No idea how to stop the racing thoughts. Any ideas what kind of calming routine might help me? Otherwise, I'm going to have to take a 1 mg melatonin supplement every night. I am sensitive to noise. I don't plan on living in a dorm due to the expense and other medical problems I have, but it sounds like it would be horrendous for me. I am going to get exempted once I get that far.

When I was in my first year of college, I had a problem with a roommate who made phone calls late at night. (Back then, phone companies charged more for long-distance calls than for local calls, and calls late at night were cheaper than during the day or evening.) I, on the other hand, needed 9 to 10 hours of sleep, and I had a physics class at 8:00 AM - and I needed to be able to go to the cafeteria and eat something before said class.

So I complained up the chain, telling them I needed a roommate who would be quiet all night, starting early in the evening. I was told that such a roommate would be very hard to find. Eventually I was moved to a dorm which was off the main campus but had single rooms, which usually were reserved for people above the freshman level.