Good and Bad of Living in Campus
For simplicity of calculation, this article assumes local currency RM3.50 equals to USD1 as it is the middle between old exchange roughly RM3=USD1 and the newer exchange roughly RM4=USD1.
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| Rooms in the campus dormitory |
Just like the previous semesters, I get to live in campus dormitory again. Do
you know that we are actually getting force to live in the campus? No, not
forced by university, but forced by environment surrounding us the students.
University has never force students to stay inside, plus they even provide
support with a special team which would go to the student's house if it gets
flooded for example. But, the environment has force us to just stay inside,
particularly because the distance between classes and the very high house
renting prices. Even we're living in campus, there's good and bad side of
living in here, let's look at the good first because we should always start
with positive thing!
Good
1. Near to classes
The distance between the dormitory rooms to the class is nearer than rent
houses outside of campus. Though this would mean no excuse to be late, it's
good as you could still go back to room in between classes.
2. Easy to participate in activities
A lot of activities are carried out in the university compound, when you
live in the dormitory rooms, it will be a lot easier to participate in the
activities organized by anyone in the university.
3. Easy to get to anywhere
You could just walk to anywhere you want, you don't feel tired from walking
as it is not far. Compared to living outside, you need to walk for a very
long and you will be half-dead tired by the time you arrived to the place
you're going.
4. Free medical checks and medicine
This might not available in all universities, but all public universities
are required to have this for their students. In my case, they have a
dedicated medical building with complete basic treatment. No matter it's a
cold, fever, or up to injuries from activities, or vaccination, it's free
for students. They have their own ambulance in case something serious
happened and needs further treatment in proper hospital.
5. Recreational parks available
In our case, we have a recreational park in university compound. It has a
nice lake and jogging tracks, with shades of trees and a few small benches.
6. Free sports facility available
For students who really take care of their health, there's free to use
gymnasium hall, race track, soccer field, badminton court, tennis court, and
others.
Bad
1. No WiFi
While there are some university that has good WiFi coverage, either free or
paid, in my case there's only one WiFi spot in the whole dormitory buildings
of roughly 120 rooms and covering all 360 students. At my room, we could not
get the coverage at all and hence the point "No WiFi". We tried going to the
hotspot itself and could only get 8kbps (1KB/s). In the end, we had to
subscribe to our own mobile data which is obviously expensive with too
little quota.
2. Expensive (or acceptable) cafes
For me, the foods are expensive, though people who actually originated from
cities would say the prices are acceptable. A plate of rice with one piece
of chicken and some savoury priced at RM4.00 (USD 1.14) which is much higher
than what it's priced at cafes near to my home, RM2.50 (USD 0.71) but lower
than what it's usually priced in cities, like one of my friends say it is
sold at price of RM6.00 (USD 1.71) in a city.
3. Limited items sold
There are many shops in the university compound, but the items being sold
are limited. When something we need is out-of-stock, we need to wait next
month to get it, or go to shops outside the university, which gets in next
point...
4. Expensive transport
We need transport to get to shops outside of university when things are not
available there, but the transport is very expensive. The taxi will charge
for the whole car no matter how many of people is boarding the taxi. When
you're alone, you will still pay the price for 5 people. To get to the
nearest shop complex, you'll be charged RM10 (USD 2.86) per taxi no matter
you're alone or there's 5 of you.
5. Not allowed to work part-time
Students who actually get dormitory is because they can't afford to rent
house outside university, hence you can't work part-time as they think you
will afford to rent if you actually work and chase you out from dormitory,
but they never realized the monthly part-time salary is usually only half
from monthly rent. This leaves students coming from poor or medium family
like me to fully depending on the small amount of study loan that we get to
continue our life in the university, as parents could not afford to support
us as they're having financial difficulties themselves.
6. Unstable electricity & lazy technicians
This is quite a problem when you're living in dormitory rooms. Each rooms
consists of three students and six electric sockets. This means each student
only has two sockets to be used. Since the whole floor where I live were
majority students in computer science, we uses electrics a lot. We had to
use divider sockets to allow more electric appliances to be plugged into the
only two sockets. Sometimes, something went wrong somewhere and tripped the
main circuit. When this happened, we need to wait at least six hours and up
to two days for the lazy in-charge technician to get to the power box and
restore it for the whole floor.
I myself have 6 devices connected to my two power sockets: drinking water
heater, automatic electric mosquito repellent (24/7), laptop, printer,
2-port USB adapter to charge two phones and 4-port USB adapter (24/7) to
power two USB data hubs (7-port USB 3.0 hub for laptop & 4-port USB 2.0
hub for one of my phones which connected via OTG), USB night lamp and
keyboard lights since roommates turn off light early at night and I can't
type in the dark. One of my roommates has another 6 devices connected to
their two power sockets including a complete computer with LCD screen.
There's someone on the floor who even has 10 plugs connected to 2 sockets as
their computer use separate power supply for main CPU and for additional
graphic cards, and another 4 LCD screens to make it 4K resolution, among
other basic devices like phone chargers etc. When they're not playing games,
they do programming assignment on 1 screen while watching game live in
Twitch in another screen, and playing anime music videos off YouTube in 1
screen and chatting with gaming friends in the last screen.