dorm life

The Scamp’s Tale From the Strange

Posted on by erranteditor

I’d like to start this post by saying I am no means a prude. I’m also not dumb enough to think that this little cesspool I live in doesn’t house some odd stuff. I know that I live in a zoo. I know that these 18 year olds have no morals or shame. That being said, this was a first for me.

I’ve been awake since 4 am. The guy that lives below me likes to listen to his club music really loud, and likes to shout over the music to impress the girls that are constantly hanging out with him. I can hear them chatting and laughing, and sometimes I dance along to the music. He always seems to stop by 10 or 11, and since that is when I am getting ready to wind down for the night, it doesn’t bother all that much. The cleaning lady has told me that he is a really posh guy with good looks and lots of money.

Looks like Mr. Posh is also a bit of a perv. He woke me in the wee hours of the morning with his sexual escapades. The girl he was with made some very unfortunate noises….in fact, I am not even sure she was enjoying herself. The thing that got me though, was that every time I thought they were done, she would start again, but with a different guy! I spent two hours…maybe more listening to her rotate the guys in the room while they each had their fun with her. After each round I could hear them laugh, chat and get ready for the next one. I was so grossed out. I realize that just because I don’t enjoy group sex (or a gangbang? I don’t even know what you would call it) doesn’t mean that other people won’t. It also doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy other people watching, laughing and having a go at them. I had to get my headphones to block them out, but even then, all I really wanted to do was get up and take a shower. I’m hoping that satisfied them for awhile, or, if they need to do it again, they put a gag in her or something (I’m sure there is a market for that.)

There are just some things I should not have to be a part of, but since I have to suffer with the memory, so should my lovely readers. After all, misery loves company.

A Scamp on a Rampage

Posted on by erranteditor

So after yesterday’s lovely interaction with the undergrads, one of the girls that I hang out with emailed the people who run this place and wanted to know why  no one felt the need to stop the bullying. I was against this. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, I removed myself from the group, and didn’t read any of the 20 something comments. I didn’t even read them when I got screen shots of them just in case. I just wanted to pretend that it didn’t happen and move on. The good thing about these assholes is that they move on quickly. I figured by Monday, they would move on to something else.After reading the email,  the warden deleted the thread, and promised she would talk to the RAs about what is ok on FB. Earlier in the day, the RA who was initially taking part in the conversation told the boys off. All of the boys who got scolded figured I was the one who went crying to him about it, and because two of the girls in the group are my neighbors, they are now camped out in the hall, outside my door (after all, it is the middle point between the two rooms) talking about how I love to cry to people to get my way and how I can’t handle a little bit of truth. I’m pretty sure lonely hag was mentioned at least once, but it could have been more.

On the whole, what a bunch of snobby rich kids say about me means nothing. They know nothing of the real world or hard work, or even responsibility. The thing that bothers me is that I didn’t say anything to anyone other than my friends (and the internet, but since I am not friends with anyone who is involved, none of them saw it). I was trying to mind my own business and hope they found a new whipping boy before the weekend was over. If I wasn’t going to get kicked out of housing, I would swing my door open right now and tell them all to go fuck themselves, and then kick the guy who started all of this in the face. He already looks like a retarded pug with a snobby pushed in face and prissy accent, so I am pretty sure that I can take him. It’s the 6 other guys and two girls I am not so sure about. I am, after all, 1 tiny female.

Moral of the story: Don’t say anything. Next time their is some sort of injustice, I am just going to let it go by me and keep my nose out of it……yeah, like that will ever happen. We all know me and my smart mouth (although this time I did not suggest that any of the boys perform sex acts on each other) will continue to speak out against something not right. Someone has to civilize the savages that live here.

The real moral of the story: It is worth the extra debt to live in dorm that does not allow undergrads. I knew that dorm life would not be all sunshine and roses, but this is starting to get ridiculous. I thought for sure that after the first week they would turn into humans. Thank you UK education system for not counting the first year of university, thus making this an extended spring break for them. Thanks a lot.

Don’t feel too bad for me though. I may have cried yesterday when I had to deal with alone, and I may be near tears now, but I am more angry than anything else. You see people like this on TV shows or in the movies, but you don’t often have to deal with them. It is no fun being the punching bag, but there are a lot more people that deal with a lot worse, so for now, I am going to curl up in bed with a funny movie and appreciate the fact that I had ice cream today,

A Scamp Eats Her Words

Posted on by erranteditor

I have an MA in Rhetoric. I have a BA in Literature. I love words. I love to read them, love to listen to them, and I really love to speak them. It’s that last part that usually gets me in trouble. Today was no exception.

Yesterday the whole of Lee House (the dorm I live in) received an email that since someone (or in this case, a group of people) felt the need to trash the common room, then we were all going to be fined for the repairs if the twat bags who did the crime did not fess up. The dorm has a group Facebook page, and when someone else in the dorm posted about the email (and I know that this girl was not involved in the destruction), the boys who were involved made the comment that since it was only a few pounds per person, we should just be happy and pay the fine. My comment was that it wasn’t the amount of the fine, but the fact that most of us were being punished for a room we don’t go in was not real fair. I then mentioned to the RA who chimed in that he was kidding himself if he thought his urge to the culprits to turn themselves in would do anything. I said if they didn’t respect Lee House enough to not damage property, then they were not going to respect us enough to turn themselves in. Then the little assholes who did the damage started in on me. They called me negative (ok, that one is true) and told me I needed to relax and just pay the fine so that everyone could go back to enjoying the room. Of course he spelled always as all ways, so I itched to correct him and offer to tutor him in spelling (I mean, I teach writing, if you are going to insult me, at least spell things right for fuck’s sake). This led them to question if I even lived in the building, and mock me using youtube videos (for those of you who think this is funny and I am overreacting, please just keep it to yourself) and then decided that of course it was me that damaged everything and stole a cable for the TV and get this, I did it all because Obama is the president. They again misspelled some of their insults, and the urge to correct them was strong, but I didn’t want to feed the fire. Usually, stuff like this wouldn’t bother me. Usually, snobby kids like this who think they rule the world wouldn’t make it on my radar. I’d tell them to go fuck themselves and then move on with my life. After all, in 6 months I will be back home with my family and I will still be in contact with the people here who matter to me.

The thing is, I’ve been off my game lately. The food here sucks, and the twat bags can run rampant with no consequence so I haven’t slept in weeks. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I don’t have a job, so spending money on nights out to eat a good meal or to get some peace is not quite in my budget. The only thing that is keeping me from going all Carrie up in here is the fact that they’d probably throw me in jail if I killed all of them and then I wouldn’t be able to go home. I’m trying to hold on to the fact that I will be home in a few weeks and at the end of the day these kids are nothing more than a cockroach that needs to be stepped on. Today I have no room for personal attacks or insults or jokes made at my expense because I made a logical point (and once I did it without my usual charm and snark).

If I could go back in time a few hours, I would have simply just grumbled and complained to myself about the fine and went about my business. You’d think I would have learned by now. Instead, I am taking sage advice from one of my best friends, “curl up in bed with your favorite movie and let today pass.”

As postscript to this: I had dinner with my best friends here and they made me feel a lot better. They were angry on my behalf and made me laugh through the meal. I had a good laugh with the rest of the 4th floor as they attempted to make me feel better,  and while I still don’t think that they would have been as upset as I was, they did make it seem less like my fault for opening my mouth and more like them just being assholes. I’m still going to keep my nose out of any Lee House business, but at least I feel less whiny and depressed now. Too bad there is no ice cream.

A Scamp and Hair

Posted on by erranteditor

As a kid, I was the twin with the long hair and Kelly was the twin with the short hair. I’m not sure why that was, but that’s how it was. Every now and then we would switch it up and she would grow hers out and I would cute mine, but we seem to always go back to what we know best. My senior year of my undergrad I when I first got sick, I cut off 11 inches in a moment of panic. The drugs I was taking made all my hair fall out and I had myself convinced I was going bald (trust me on this one, that is not a good look for me) and in an effort not to notice how much hair was falling out, I went with a short do. It did me well for awhile, but I was very happy when it grew back. When I moved to Scotland I decided that I was not going to cut my hair until I moved home, whenever that may be. Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly, until last week when I noticed an alarming trend.

Every morning I wake up to a new clump of my hair on my pillow. Everywhere I sit, everything I wear, everything I touch is covered in my hair. I feel bad for the cleaners when they come in to vacuum my room because I can only image the hair they have to clean out of it at the end of the day. There is hair stuck in my pants, stuck on all my jackets and all over my bed. I get fresh sheets every week, but lately, that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. Everything is still covered in hair.

David used to joke that he could always tell how recently I had been in his bed by the amount of hair that he would find. He used to joke about it, but it always worried me a bit. Hair loss is a side effect of all the drugs, but it is also a symptom of Lupus. When my hair is not falling out, and I am having a good pain day, I can almost pretend that I am not a defect. I know that part of it is stress, and part of it is normal, but I am still not enjoying the winter shed I appear to be going through.

Today I am stuck in my room with a bad cold. I know that is contributing to my feelings about my hair. I’m feeling icky and gloomy and have a touch of cabin fever, and I know that is why I suddenly see all the hair, or suddenly worry about how I will make it in such a cold place if I go bald. I am hoping that lots of drugs and some good sleep will make things seem a little brighter in the morning.

 

A Scamp and the Mumps

Posted on by erranteditor

Don’t worry, I do not have the mumps (at least not yet….) but my neighbor has them. The poor boy passed out in the hallway the other day, and if it wasn’t for the wonderful ladies who have to clean our dorm, who knows how long the poor kid would have been there? He’s a nice guy, I don’t know him that well, but he seems shy and quiet, and not that social, so I got worried when Liz (the wonderful woman who cleans my side of the dorms) told me he had gotten ill. Luckily there was no real cause for worry about his well-being. My R.A. Esther and my partner’s in crime Jade and Cecile checked in on him every few hours, made sure that he got meals, and sweet talked a GP into an appointment so that he could get a proper diagnosis and make sure that there wasn’t something seriously wrong with him. The head of accommodations for our hall has checked on him, and the 4th floor students who don’t suck at life (meaning the ones who are not undergrads) have been asking about him and offering to help get him to and from the doctor or bring him meals. I know how bad it is to be homesick, and I really know how bad it can be when you are too sick to function and how badly you just want your mommy to come take care of you and tell you everything will be okay. His mom isn’t here, but he has the next best thing, he has Mama Jade, fearlessly leading the charge to make sure this kid is taken care of.

I’m envious of her. She didn’t think twice about helping him, and she shut down people who questioned why she would put herself at risk for someone who can clearly take care of himself (shit, I’m 25 years old, but the minute I get even the slightest fever or on days when the pain in my hands and feet are really bad I turn into a 5 year old and just want my mom). She even used her handy mini fridge to make him an ice pack because she knew that the cold would make him feel better. She did all of this without the slightest thought to her own health. I stopped in to see him a couple of times, and told him that he could come knock on my door if he needed anything, but truth is, I am scared that he is still contagious.  I do not want to get sick. I’ve had my shots, but if I get sick now there is no way that I will be able to go home for Christmas, and I desperately want to see my family. I feel completely selfish. This poor kid is all alone, passing out in hallways, and feeling like crap, and the only thing that I can think about is my own crappy immune system and how I desperately want to go home for Christmas. His needs far outweigh mine right now, so I open this up to everyone: What sort of comforts do you like when you are sick? What can I do to make him feel better? Part of this is to assuage my own guilt for not being as fearless as Jade, and part of this is to help him since he will most likely be feeling like crap for the better part of a month. I don’t know how to help boys feel comforted, so all my three or so male readers, can you help me out with this one?

Don’t say porn. I know where the sex shop is here, but I am not going to buy porn and risk someone seeing me with it. I am a lady after all.

A Scamp in the Wrong

Posted on by erranteditor

There are few things I hate more than when I am wrong. I pride myself on never being wrong (or being able to talk people in circles until I can convince them I am right).Those lofty delusions of grandeur sometimes come back to bite me.

Today is one of those days.

A year ago I was going through a very rough patch and not coping well. I had been dumped in a cruel way, I hated my job, and I was spending more time alone than with other people. I was getting horrible panic attacks and generally just being plain miserable to everyone. To help me cope, the doctor suggested I take a low dose of an anti-depressant. For the better part of the year, I have generally had good days, and I have not had one panic attack. Because of this, I assumed that it would be okay to stop taking the pills. I take 9 other prescribed pills on a daily basis, and I figured one less in my day wouldn’t be a bad thing. I told David about this, and he told me that I shouldn’t stop taking them because I am better on them than off them. That hurt my feelings. A lot. I hate that I am dependent on the pain pills and the sleeping pills and immune boosting pills to survive my daily life, that I hated the idea that my anti-anxiety pills were no different. I always thought that one day I would be able to stop taking them and life would go back to normal (or at least I would be able to be in a crowded room or not have to sit on an aisle or near a door without feeling like the room is caving in on me). I ended the convo with David very quickly, and went to class still convinced that I know best and there is no reason for me to go back to the doctor to fill the prescription.

As most of my bad ideas, this one came back to bite me in the butt. For the better part of two weeks (about the same amount of time I have been off the pills) I have had strange headaches, and feeling a bit off. Today I had dinner with a large group of people, and I was sandwiched in an odd part of the tables that we had pushed together. I barely made it through dinner when I felt the all too familiar signs of a panic attack creeping on. I don’t know if it was the hot stuffy room, the way I felt trapped between people and tables, or the fact that I am ridiculously tired, but all I do know was five more minutes in there and I would have totally embarrassed myself.

And here is where I admit that I was wrong. Tomorrow I am going to drag my sorry little butt over to the health clinic and have my meds re-filled. I will talk to the doc about maybe working my way off of them one day. Today, it would seem, is not that day.

A Scamp and Her Priorities

Posted on by erranteditor

I’ve only been here for three weeks and I am already a felon. There is a rule at Pollock Halls that states you are not allowed to take food from the caf. No one pays attention to the rule. Croissants, rolls, cheese, meats, all of that gets wrapped into napkins and stuffed into bags and backpacks. I do it all the time, but yesterday I got caught. Food Nazi came over and asked for my meal card and told me she was going to report me to my warden (yes warden, like I live in a prison…cell block Lee House.) I swear (and I know that this will be hard for some people after the great CVS incident of 2010) but I did not do anything to provoke the woman, other than try to take food out of the caf. She asked me if I had read the signs that say “Don’t take the food at of the cafeteria” but those signs are next to the “love food, hate waste” signs, and those seemed way more important to me. I took the food, I wasn’t going to eat it at that moment, and did not want it to go to waste. I was totally going to eat it for lunch (I did, and it was delicious.) The strange thing is that I am not even that upset about the strike on my record. Even if they eventually kick me out of accommodations, at least I will be homeless in Scotland.

I have also come to the point in my career that I have to decide what they next year will hold. I have been talking to one of the brightest people I have met here, and she is in the working stages of her PhD. It is fun to hear her try and puzzle out how she is going to tackle her research and all of the things she wants to do and places that she wants to visit to aid her in thought process. She likes to chat out her ideas to work through them, and as someone who does the same, I enjoy listening to her and feeling that I am bit helpful in the process. I know she will do great things, and that is what I want, I want to do something worthwhile.

I’ve come to the point where I have to decide if I am going to stay here to complete my research, or if I am going to come home and finish it in Fullerton. While Fullerton is the smarter choice since my work is locally focused, and I will have a better shot of being able to pay for Fullerton, I really would like to stay here. I like the idea that I can spend a couple of years here and have the chance to live, teach, and study here. Problem is, it is expensive, I am currently without a job, and they don’t give a whole lot of scholarships and financial aid here.

The worry here is that if I choose to do this, then I am putting my relationship in jeopardy. He tells me that he is going to wait and that we will spend the rest of our lives together, but I can’t help but wonder if he is going to change his mind. I heard this song and dance before and it crashed and burned when we were faced with distance. I know how wrong it is to compare the two, but it’s what I do best. The plan had always been to stay here and make my life here, but when I made that plan I was flying solo. Now I’m in a herd (a flock? A gaggle? a dynamic duo) and have to make choices with his feelings in mind. He of course, has no feelings in the matter, but I am assuming that he would prefer that I come home. Lately we have been arguing a lot. Mostly it is me with my feelings hurt, and him feeling helpless, but this week I came to the startling realization that the two of us are not on the same page about the future, and a lot of that is due to me not wanting to make him jump ship again. This week marks what would have been our first anniversary, and not only did we spend it apart, but it doesn’t actually count since we broke up shortly after getting together. I’d like to think it still counts, but I am in the boat alone on that one.

I’m alone in a lot of boats, most importantly the boat that keeps me here. The question is: Do I want to stay in this boat or jump ship?

A Scamp and Enemies

Posted on by erranteditor

It is only week three and I have managed to make some enemies. I didn’t set out to make them, but it happened. I was really just after a good night’s sleep. My medical condition makes me tired enough on its own, but adding no sleep into that mix and I float somewhere between a zombie and a piece of the furniture. It started last week with a tutor (the equivalent to a TA) called me an idiot because I asked for some clarification on an article that I could not make heads or tails of. This evil wench told me that she was not there to answer questions (as my bestie pointed out, she is German and that is very common for them to just be flat out rude and insulting to students) and that I should not be expected to be spoon fed answers. She copied the director of the program on the email, and all I had really asked was if we could discuss the readings before class got started so that I would have something to contribute to the discussion. The whole group feels this way, but I was the one who was nominated to email Claudia the Horrible, so I am the one who feels insulted. I wanted to huff and puff and tell the bitch this wasn’t my first graduate degree and that if she is being paid $100 an hour to be in the classroom, I better leave her room feeling like I would have learned more from a monkey speaking Greek. The only thing that this did was make her academic enemy number one and she is about to get eight weeks of me in bitch mode. Claudia the Horrible is an enemy I am making on my own decision. She doesn’t have to be an enemy, but I have decided that I will not tolerate the way she treated me. The other set of enemies that I made were not by choice.

I happen to live with the most rude people I have ever encountered. They run and shout in the hallways at 3 am, they mess up the toilets and break into mailboxes, and generally walk around like they own the place. The other day I kindly (or as kind as I can be at 3 am after three hours of listening to them talk about who they had had sex with so far this term) asked them to just go into one of the rooms that they were standing in front of because the rest of us were trying to sleep. They laughed at me like I was absurd, but I assume eventually went to one of the rooms. After the mandatory house meeting where I suggested that rules, curfews and timetables needed to be reviewed, they now do everything they can to be disruptive. They slam doors, hangout outside my room and chat loudly about prissy postgrads having fun studying while they get smashed, and generally make sure that nothing productive is happening between the hours of 6pm and 7am. I was not trying to point out that these fucktards were raised by wolves, I merely just wanted to be able to sleep at 3am. I was 18 and dumb once. I’m sure that I was loud on occasion. I know that I never disrupted anyone’s studies though, and if someone told me to shut up, I shut up. I guess it is a difference between American college kids and English college kids. All I know is that I am starting to feel like I did that first year in San Diego. I hated that year, and it is not one that I wish to repeat.

To deal with these children though, I have decided to get on their level. Anytime they breath too loudly on the floor after 10pm mandatory quiet hours, I am calling security and having them written up. Three strikes and they are out, and some of them are already on strike two. I’m guessing that I can get them out before the term ends. The cleaning ladies have also given Jade an alarm clock and permission to get the vacuum out for 6am hoovering, so I think I may take them up on that and start setting the alarm clock for 5 am every morning (seeing as they usually stumble to bed around four, they will not enjoy it.) I am also open to all manner of suggestions, and I am not the least bit concerned that by posting this online I am showing premeditation for mischief. My revenge may not be swift, but it will most definitely be sweet. They picked the wrong scamp to mess with.

A Scamp Rant

Posted on by erranteditor

I knew that when I signed up to live in on-campus housing that it wasn’t going to be all sunshine and roses. I knew that I would have to share a bathroom with 6 or 7 others, knew that I wasn’t going to be able to bring all the shoes that I wanted, and knew that I would be making a 20 minute trek from my dorm to my classes. I even knew that there was a chance that I wouldn’t like the dorm food (for the record, the dorm food is awful. Crunchy rice, wilted salad and more grease than I know what to do with). All of that didn’t seem to bad since I would be facing all of that in Scotland, and all of it would just add to the adventure. What I was not prepared for was living with 18 year olds again.

I signed up to live in what I thought was postgrad housing. Turns out, what I signed up for was a postgrad floor in an undergrad dorm. I’m not that old, but I feel way too old to be living with these little shitheels. I’m sure that I was no princess when I was their age, but I’d like to think I was better than they are. They run through halls screaming at 3 am, rip off name tags and destroy other people’s stuff and think it is perfectly acceptable to bring beer to a house meeting on responsible drinking. It is always a mystery on whether or not I am going to get a good night’s sleep, and everyone knows how I feel about my sleep. The lack of sleep is hard on my body, and I had made so much progress this summer with the Lupus, that I am going to kill a fresher if I relapse. Look for me on a future episode of Locked Up Abroad.

As I tried to shower tonight, the idiots that live below me had moved all the belongings out of a boy’s room and into the toilet, keeping me from being able to shower without having to go to another block on my floor. Shlepping my stuff around when all I want is a hot shower has made me cranky.

My cranky feelings are starting to rub off on the way I treat others lately as well. I have been grouchy with my friends, and being horrible to David. The boy keeps telling me how much he misses me, how he can’t wait for us to get married and have tiny humans and have a fun life together, and meanwhile I get grouchy over how expensive it is to send me peanut butter. I’m hoping now that it is the second week of classes and things have now officially begun that people will get busy and have less time to make me crazy.

While this is not the most productive or fun post I’ve done, it was a much needed vent before bed.