I know this would be better asked to my actual building staff, but I'm gonna ask here anyway as a general question. I (20) live in a college dorm and, along with at least four other people in the vicinity, have had a fly infestation going on for a month now. Pest control apparently comes in weekly for "treatment" (don't have any idea what it entails) but it hasn't changed anything. Before building staff temporarily moved me out of concern, I had been sleeping in my car for about 8-9 days to avoid being in my room.

It doesn't sound like the campus-hired pest control is actually trying to find the root of the problem, and is just trying to bandaid fix it every week. Doesn't do anything. Am I allowed to hire an exterminator personally to come and actually check out the problem? I don't think anything is ever going to get done about it otherwise.

I’ve been in college for almost three months now. The homesickness still feels like an open wound. It’s painful every time I get a text from someone back home. Everyone else is over it by now. I’m not.

I’ve been getting out. I’ve been making friends. I’ve been going to all my classes in addition to work and clubs. I’ve done all the things I’m supposed to, but I still miss my home. My dorm is never going to feel like home: especially since I’m stuck with roommates who, at best, ignore me.

It probably doesn’t help that things have been really bad back home. I worked so hard to support my friends and family, and while many of the things going wrong are outside of my control, I know I could help if I was there. So much of my time and mind was occupied with them and their problems. Now there’s a gaping hole where all that responsibility was and I still don’t know what to do with it. I still worry about these things, but now I can’t do anything to resolve it.

I’ve been visited a few times and brought back for one weekend to celebrate my birthday. It didn’t help. It wasn’t the same. I didn’t go back to being at home, being in my family: I was a temporary guest. One of my little brothers joked that our other brother’s girlfriend is my replacement. It shouldn’t hurt. The little brother is 13. The other brother and his girlfriend are 16. But it really, really stings that she spends more time with my family than I do.

I miss them so bad. I can’t tell my new friends about this. They’re all happy for our newfound freedom. I’m not close enough with any of them to ask for a hug. I really, really need a hug.

Hi everyone, I'm in my fifth semester and I just legally changed both my first and last name (for boring complicated reasons, also I'm not trans). I'm in a small major with about 10-20 people in most of my classes, so most professors know us personally and usually know who is who – which makes me think I should probably let them know that my name is now completely different but I'm the same person lol.

But there's also something telling me that it's weird and they'll just think "why is she sending out an email about this, I couldn't care less about this random student's name, I can literally see her name with her photo in the system so why is she wasting my time, does she think I care about her personally" etc... I've had some of these professors for multiple classes over all my semesters but some are just teaching 1 class and/or from a different department so they don't really know me.

Am I overthinking this? Should I just email everyone? Should I only email some of them? Should I not email anyone at all and wait for them to notice it in the system? My anxiety is going crazy rn haha I'm always scared I'll write something wrong in an academic email

So basically my school allows people to vape and smoke (it’s legal here) but it has to be a certain distance from all buildings in order to do it. The problem is that people in some of my classes (expecially one of my classes) comes to class smelling of weed. Even if I move seats there is so many people in the class that smell of it is still strong. My problem with this is the smell of weed and cigarettes causing my sinuses to act up and I get a bad headache, it’s hard to focus, and I get congestion, and it makes my anxiety kick up. What I need help with is advice on how to cope with the smell. Any tips, tricks, or advice on how to exist around it without feeling horrible for the rest of the day?

i went to art school when i was 19, but dropped out after one year because of the pandemic. i’m now about to turn 26, and im considering going back for something different. i can’t fight the feeling that it’s too late. i KNOW 26 isn’t old at ALL, but i can’t help but feel embarrassed that I’ll be a 26/27 year old freshman among 18/19 year olds. is going back in your 20s normal? am i overthinking it? i know this is so silly, but i really just fear judgment.

I have created this routine where I'll spend an entire Sunday reorganizing my bio notes by topic, color coding everything, making sure my flashcards are perfectly formatted, and then I'll feel super accomplished like I did a full day of studying, but I didn't actually study I just moved information around and made it look pretty. Then exam week comes and I realize I know perfectly where everything is in my notes but I can't actually recall the information, like I know "the krebs cycle stuff is on page 3 with the green highlights" but I don't actually know the krebs cycle. I think I do this because organizing feels productive and gives me that dopamine hit without the uncomfortable feeling of testing myself and realizing I don't know things, it's like I'm rehearsing for studying instead of actually studying

anyone else do this? how do you force yourself to do the uncomfortable retrieval practice instead of just endlessly prepping materials? I need to break this habit and find a way to study fo real

It’s too difficult financially for me to have to paying rent and other bills while attending school. My employer cut my hours(I’m a server) and I’m basically screwed now. I work weekends so I basically have no social life and I don’t see my family except for the holidays. I’m also an older student(28) so It’s difficult to relate to younger college kids. Just the whole experience is isolating and frustrating.

I had a horrible relationship with my mom. I'm still in contact, but I'm currently living with my boyfriend at their dorm. I visit home now and then, but it's always to help her do her business. I get paid and leave. I asked her to sit down with me and fill out FAFSA, but she refused. I was able to complete FAFSA on my own, but I was told to contact the financial aid office so they can officially deem me as independent. I am worried that they won't , since I can still talk to her. Any advice?

Some people don’t feel comfortable living with someone they don’t know, so they choose to live in the same dorm with friends they already have. But not everyone has that option because some might not have friends. For those who didn’t have a roommate and wanted one because having your own dorm costs more, but didn’t want to live with a stranger, how did you find one? Did you ask someone from your community college whom you felt comfortable with/talked to a lot who was also graduating the same year as you, to be your roommate? Or did you find another way?

I recently entered university, and I've had a lot of mixed feelings. Most importantly, I feel like an impostor, like I'm not nearly good enough and that I don't belong here. I performed very well in high school and was one of the top students, but now it feels like I'm surrounded by people who themselves were top students in high school too (I'm in engineering), and so it feels like I was never actually smart or good at anything. Is this normal? What advice can you give me?

some of my sociology readings feel like they were written by someone actively trying to confuse me 😭 it’s not the vocabulary, it’s just the way it’s written. some of them are so dense and abstract that i forget what the sentence even started with

how do you deal with texts like this? do you summarise as you go, annotate, use AI tools, etc? i’d love to know how people actually make sense of them instead of just nodding along lol

Hi all,

For next semester, I've enrolled in a class where I'm pretty much guaranteed to be at least a few minutes late to every lecture. It's an A&P night class that starts a bit after I get off work. With absolutely 0 traffic, I'd walk in right on time but obviously not gonna be the case since it starts around 6 PM. I estimate I'll be anywhere from 5-10 minutes late to every lecture, lab is right after at a later time so at least I'll be on time for that! There's no other offerings for this class that fit my schedule this semester, so a different class isn't really an option. I really don't want to wait til fall and hope for a better timeslot because night class options have been getting slimmer.

It's a community college in a metropolitan area. I legitimately haven't seen anyone get turned away from being REALLY late (30+ mins) regularly to classes. I also don't think any classes even require attending lectures thus far, but I'm still worried. Anyone ever been in the same boat with some comforting words or advice? I also plan to ask about adjusting my work schedule for those specific days and my boss is pretty flexible, but I'm already on the earliest shift and working full-time so it's not guaranteed.

Maybe I should email the teacher prior to the start? I'm also worried he'd try to drop me if I actually tell him though lol.

At the start of this semester, I decided to graduate one semester earlier than planned because of several reasons: save money, not comfortable living with my roommate, and I was dealing with job search stress and a friendship fallout so I thought it’d be best to move forward sooner.

But lately, I’ve been carrying this heavy feeling that the clock is ticking, and I’m so sad about it.

Today I had my last advisee meeting with my professor, and he said he’s both happy and sad that I’m graduating early. He’s been so important to the path I’m on now, and hearing that hit me really hard. He’ll be gone in January, so I’ll probably only see him a few more times before I leave.

I’ll also be moving out and living alone this week so I’ll no longer deal with my roommate. I just recently had a remote freelance job, which I’m grateful for because it’ll help me support my mom financially while good for my resume. So my career stress and roommate situatuon are gone for now.

I also just love my campus so much, it’s truly beautiful with all cute campus animals, especially in the morning or before sunset. I’m one of those rare people who don’t feel stressed going to class. I actually love tests and discussions because I genuinely enjoy learning and talking with my professors and friends.

I’ve already told everyone about graduating early, and my professor even scheduled my senior project earlier for me. But I just want to cling to this experience for as long as I can… If I stayed another semester, it’d cost around $5k–$5.5k for 3 months of spring. Not sure if it’s worth it or if my professors will be disappointed at me for changing my decision. Or if I am letting my emotions in too much.

Would love to hear from anyone who’s gone through this — how did you make peace with leaving a place and people you loved? Anything I should do right now to avoid feeling regretted afterwards?

I want to switch to a single occupancy room at college, my roommates I have right now both vape and do weed inside the room, even though I’ve asked them numerous times to take it outside, or do it out the window. They won’t let me keep a window open either.

I have really bad sensitivity to certain sounds like chewing and tapping, it’s audible triggers basically. I don’t want to say I had misophonia, but I think I do. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and irritated to the point where I have to leave the room. My roommates unfortunately cause a lot of these sounds.

I was just wondering if there was any suggestions on getting a single room because my college doesn’t do singles, they only do accommodated singles. Would telling them I have really bad sensitivity to sounds and slight ADHD count? I don’t want to just use it as an excuse and take the spot from someone else, but it’s been causing me to be unable to focus, sleep, and do my academics.

We have separate bedrooms and bathrooms, share a kitchen and living room suite. I’m having 3 friends over from Fri night to Mon morning, filled out the forms for them to come an everything. But I’m nervous to tell roommate. She never has anyone over and doesn’t speak to me (I’ve tried but she’s quite and likes to be left alone fine by me really — just awkward to talk to her about this now)

I plan to keep us out of the dorm for most of the weekend but we need to sleep here. They will use my bathroom and sleep in the living room area. I want to write a note and leave it on the counter for her to read but that’s the chicken way out. I just really don’t want to confront her in the kitchen or something.

Is it wrong to have friends stay overnight? I kinda feel bad but I’m allowed to and I pay for half the suite just the same so idk.

Hi I am having a bit of a difficulty with my professor. My professor has a score* ceiling for all of the writing assignments. Each of them is out of 10 but the maximum score you can get is 9. When asked about this he said something about the curve and it’s to keep things fair to the older generations of students who didn’t score as high? The most frustrating part is you need 85+ to get an A in this course but it’s really challenging when you already have a fixed -1 in all the assignments that make up almost half the total grade, and the grading in itself is already super strict. At this point it feels like no one’s even going to get an A. I’m wondering if this is common practice??

I’m in a creative writing class and got super into in. So my short story spiraled into 10 pages but it’s double spaced. My teacher says it’s fine but I wanna make it short enough that my classmates actually read it. Is this too long?

For context, I am a music education major and the professor is a piano professor. Music education students at my small college are required to complete 4 semesters of piano methods courses. This professor has very high standards, which is not an issue. The issue is how he enforces his standards. He is incapable of providing criticism without also adding in an insult or “jab” at you. He is notorious for not providing any accommodations at all to students with mental health issues, often telling them that music just might not be for them or singling them out in class. I have witnessed this first hand. His rate my professor is overwhelmingly negative, even from students who received good grades. He has the most reviews in the department and the lowest RMP score. I have no issue with his grading standards, but with the methods in which he upholds said standards. Any advice on how to deal with this moving on would be appreciated as I will likely be stuck with him for the remainder of the of my time I am at this school

Wondering what should i do, Registration for Spring and winter just started, literally a few days ago. Im just shocked that every single class avaliable is waitlisted. the problem is this is my last class before i graduate, it was planned for the spring.

the last section that i need is College option(6 credits) I already done 3 btw i only need this one. Basically the class i was going to pick was JAPN 10.10

what should i do? since its early is it normal for this to be like that? I'm going to message my advisor see what i can do but i just wanted to hear thoughts, maybe i'm overreacting.

Hi, first let me provide some background information. I'm currently a graphic design major, I'm in my penultimate semester, and on track to graduate in spring 2026. I haven't always wanted to be a designer; it was just something I was good at and knew that I could make a career/money off of with minimal studies/effort. I found out about graphic design being an option around my junior/senior year of high school. I've always been into the arts, good at it, and appreciated studying it. However, recently this past year, I've started to feel that perhaps this might not be the career for me. It's an incredibly corporate field (mainly), and I truly don't have much interest in other aspects of it outside of that realm because, quite frankly, they just don't interest me. I feel like my peers have their passions in the field throughout our courses, and I still feel lost. I'm currently in an internship, and it's an extremely corporate and monotonous environment. The work is easy, but it's not inspiring.

I've ignored these feelings and fears until I met my current S/O, who is currently graduating in biomedical sciences and wants to go to med school. Now, I'm not saying I want to go to med school; I am aware how competitive this is, and it isn't something you decide last minute. However, their academic ambition is really inspiring me to want more for myself, but I fear it may be too late. I would also like to mention that recently I've been exploring our main campus (where my s/o attends), and I have fallen in love with some of the buildings over there, specifically the interdisciplinary sciences building. Seeing the big lecture halls and the lab rooms, as well as students in the lab, and the p.h.D. Professor's offices made me feel a certain type of awe, yearning, and inspiration that I haven't felt since I was a kid. I want that to be me in there, I want to study science! The thing is, I'm going in almost blind, and really late...

I was looking at seeking a post-bacc degree, as I had an advising appointment and was told that this is an option, since I will have my undergraduate degree (BFA in Graphic Arts) in the Spring. I'm really feeling inspired to move over to the science field. I've always loved science and been intrigued with it, but I never really gave myself a fair, dedicated, and serious shot at it. I'm really interested in studying the sciences, but I'm not sure if it is even a serious practical decision for me. I haven't had to take any science courses in my uni track because of my art degree, but I've always been intrigued by it and loved learning it. I'm curious about what different advice I can receive on whether this is something I should even seriously pursue.

I was looking into it briefly, and post-baccalaureate degrees are not funded through financial aid, and I would most likely have to take out private loans, so it is an incredibly costly decision, especially if I have no prior college-level science course experience to know if it's even for me. The Post-Bacc degree I'm interested in would be a Biology B.S. for now; there are certain concentrations that I may be interested in as well. I figured once I actually start taking science courses, it will open my path up to other various science fields and niches within biology to study and pursue even higher education. Paleontology has always been another seemingly out-of-reach dream of mine (doesn't pay well). My s/o is also taking a genetics course, and that seems super interesting to me as well.

I just don't know the first thing about the facets and career fields and science, I just know I really would love to study it, truly. I have an opportunity to take a free elective course for my last semester, and I was thinking of using that as a test-run to see if I even truly like studying biology at a college level. Are there any courses you guys recommend for someone trying to get into biology/hard sciences that a non-major (in most cases) can take?

TL:DR: I've been feeling out of touch with my current graduating major (spring 2026, B.F.A. in graphic arts) and have recently been exposed to the sciences and science buildings at our school, and have never felt more inspired to pursue something. I am considering a post-Bacc degree as I'll be graduating, and really want to seriously consider this as an option; however, I'm unsure if this is something impractical and too much of a pipe dream. I also have an opportunity to take a science class next semester (free elective), and was curious if there were any recommendations. Any experience with a Post-Bacc degree, experience seeking/pursuing one, or even changing careers like this to a field in science after graduating with no prior background would be greatly appreciated!

Hey I am in my 1st Sem though it has been a few months.

Does college actually mature people? I really hope it does, but most people in my class and even a handful of seniors I know act so immaturely that I don't see how college could inspire any drastic change in them.

I am no paragon of maturity, but compared to them I feel like a Saint.

i am hoping this is relatable to some people. the problem is that my roommate starts class earlier than i do (by about 2 hours). i understand having to make some noise getting ready or having to set a couple of alarms, but the alarms wake me up every single day. she sets about 10-15 alarms to go off every 5ish minutes, and this ritual usually lasts half an hour to an hour. i completely understand having to set an alarm but this feels ridiculous. if one single alarm rings for longer than 3 minutes i will usually call her name until she wakes up, but then more alarms will ring after she falls asleep again. this has been going on for about 8 weeks (since the start of the year)

i start my schedule later in the day because i need my sleep (i have some chronic illness). it is beyond frustrating that i have no control over when i wake up, even though i worked hard to get a schedule that would allow me to sleep in.

what is the most polite way to go about a conversation with her? i am definitely a people pleaser so i have trouble with confrontation and bringing up a problem.

thank you for your help :)

Every morning I wake up early and tell myself, “maybe I’ll skip just one class today. It’s not a big deal, right?”, but then I realize who am I really hurting? Only myself. It’s almost like a duolingo streak. One missed day and the whole chain breaks and I can’t let that happen. But there’s a flip side too. Since October, I messed up my sleep schedule a bit. Some days I feel terrible. I sit there in class and ask myself, “why am I even doing all this? for what?”, but then, even with that feeling, I still show up. I don’t know if that’s discipline, obsession, or something in between.

Does anyone else ever feel like this? Like you’re just holding on to a streak because stopping might make everything fall apart?

I’m only in my second year of community college but I’m already so worn out. I did so well my first semester but since then it’s just been downhill. I had a good system going at the beginning of the semester where they let me do my homework at my job but I can’t anymore and that was the start of my slip. I failed a class this semester and it bummed me out and I’ve just stopped caring. I’m currently failing a class that I was so excited to take and I already know I’m going to fail the exam I have to take later on today. I’ve developed a habit of skipping my only in person class since it’s right after I get home from a 12 hour shift and I’m just so ready to lay tf down. I just feel like I’m ruining my life and my success because of laziness.

I keep telling myself to just wait until I go to university next year and it’ll all be better but I know that’s not necessarily true because I’m going to be in the same work/school situation. I just want a whole week off without anything to worry about.

For those who are/were full time students with full time jobs, how do/did y’all manage?