As the end of the year quickly approaches, and figuring out your living arrangements becomes more and more important, I just wanted to share a few of my experiences. If you are a quiet, studious type, living in off-campus student housing may not be your best choice.

Trust an expert, I am a veteran of off-campus student housing of three years. It’s horrible.

Let’s begin with the facades. Each of the popular off-campus housing complexes looks like the 3D renderings used to sell the idea of their existence to investors.

I constantly worry about completely unhinging my friends’ doors by simply knocking on them when I arrive. It seems so incredibly unstable. I’ve even had the privilege of witnessing the intense flooding caused by a light rain shower.

I can personally say I’ve had a great look at the infrastructure of my current home. Last year a very drunk neighbor decided he didn’t like the hallway adjacent to my apartment.

I awoke to a loud banging sound and found out the next morning that there was a foot-wide hole next to the molding around my door. Thankfully, it was fixed in a timely manner — unlike many things that have been broken over the years.

The biggest issue I’ve had, however, are the various neighbors that have lived near me over the years.

A day has not passed where this sober college kid’s apartment hasn’t been flooded with the pot smoke from my neighbor’s dwelling. I’m pretty sure that even my cat has felt the contact high from my neighbor’s sufficiently smelly weed.

Some nights, my sweet slumber is disturbed by the sounds of my neighbors above me really taking advantage of “Your Body is a Wonderland” by John Mayer. And by some nights, I mean almost every weekend.

Two years ago, there were a rowdy bunch of inhabitants who decided the stairwell angered them. They spent the better part of a couple months constantly destroying the hallway. Punching holes in every landing’s wall.

When holes didn’t appease them, Oreo blizzards and full beer bottles were viciously slung around.

Much of off-campus student housing hosts fun events to entertain their inhabitants. I believe it’s an attempt to create the dorm experience. And much like the dorm I lived in, even when you didn’t want to attend their event, you were forced to hear about it non-stop anyway.

I wish someone would have warned me before I stepped into the large puddle of pee in my stairwell. I wished someone would have warned me about the complex’s shoddy appliances. I wish they would have warned me about the hooligans that I would be surrounded by.

Instead, they allowed me to believe that living in one of these off-campus complexes was my best choice.

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