Reconsidering the Needs of Communal Living
After weeks of anxious waiting, the accommodation offer from LSE finally arrived in my mailbox. At the rather expensive rate of around 120 pounds a week, I will have a single dorm room located at the heart of London, two blocks away from both the main campus as well as my new home station of King’s Cross (of the Harry Potter fame, as I discovered last weekend after watching the 7th movie). Yet, the uneasiness upon acknowledging the prospects of going back to that dreaded environment of school dormitory is somewhat outweighing the joy from not having to go out and find my own housing in an unknown metropolis.
Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that dorm life, more than classes, activities, or personal relationships, defined my four years of college life. The dorm-mates, for better or worse, became not friends but collectively a surrogate family: people you may not necessarily like at all, yet must spend time with in a regular basis. Their presence, no matter how unwelcome, is often completely assured, to such an extent that, by the end, complete silence spent with them in a common room would bring about absolutely no sense of awkwardness whatsoever.
But at the same time, because dorm-mates have to spend so much time together and deal with each other with consistent friendliness in order to resolve various issues in our communal living, the dorm-mates’ impressions of each other became so significant. Especially in the first, anxious days of living together, every action taken and every word uttered were causes for some behind-the-back complaints about “nasty personal habits of you-know-who.”
Then there is the added nuisance of cultural differences. In a way I am glad that my college dorm consist of people who have all lived for enough years in the States to at least understand certain taboos associated with living in American society (well, I am by far the most likely to break those “unwritten social rules”). I cannot possibly expect the same thing over in London. I, among perhaps the vast majority of my potential dorm-mates, will be new to Britain, struggling to understand the strange host society and each other.
It is my hope that my months over here in the Chuncheon “dorms” may give me some pointers for my time in the LSE dorms. In a way, everything is about courtesy (in a highly superficial, polite form) to establish smooth, yet emotionally detached working partnerships. But simultaneously, it is about moving beyond courtesy and genuinely sharing some secrets and not-to-be-confessed confidential information to build up trust as confidants and friends in the most socially realistic definition.
Sure, in any closed environments, there will be random debilitating rumors. They will undoubtedly break relationships and cause tension within the dorms. But every opportunity for schism can also be seen as a chance of unity in a different perspective. Hate (and in some cases, love) for a common person unite people of different interests and backgrounds, and often the most simple complaints and confessions transcend any sort of cultural difference.
As long as I do not find myself in the position of an instigator of any conflicts, the dorm life should stay peaceful and harmonious. But if no one instigates anything, how boring would the dorm life be? Efforts to establish and maintain peace can be thought of as true maturity, but wouldn’t the much more laborious efforts to deal with and settle existing violent conflicts be even more certain symbols of maturity? Either way, striking the balance between “peace” and “excitement” will be interesting to watch...
And finally, a closing comment on becoming a complete foreigner again. As shown by the blind following of Harry Potter (which I watched last weekend) and Transformers (watched last last weekend) shows, being American does bring certain advantages. But the arrogance of being from America and Yale would indeed lead to my being perceived as arrogant no matter what I do. Avoiding scything remarks and connecting others without showing American cultural-centrism will be the key to succeeding abroad socially.
Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that dorm life, more than classes, activities, or personal relationships, defined my four years of college life. The dorm-mates, for better or worse, became not friends but collectively a surrogate family: people you may not necessarily like at all, yet must spend time with in a regular basis. Their presence, no matter how unwelcome, is often completely assured, to such an extent that, by the end, complete silence spent with them in a common room would bring about absolutely no sense of awkwardness whatsoever.
But at the same time, because dorm-mates have to spend so much time together and deal with each other with consistent friendliness in order to resolve various issues in our communal living, the dorm-mates’ impressions of each other became so significant. Especially in the first, anxious days of living together, every action taken and every word uttered were causes for some behind-the-back complaints about “nasty personal habits of you-know-who.”
Then there is the added nuisance of cultural differences. In a way I am glad that my college dorm consist of people who have all lived for enough years in the States to at least understand certain taboos associated with living in American society (well, I am by far the most likely to break those “unwritten social rules”). I cannot possibly expect the same thing over in London. I, among perhaps the vast majority of my potential dorm-mates, will be new to Britain, struggling to understand the strange host society and each other.
It is my hope that my months over here in the Chuncheon “dorms” may give me some pointers for my time in the LSE dorms. In a way, everything is about courtesy (in a highly superficial, polite form) to establish smooth, yet emotionally detached working partnerships. But simultaneously, it is about moving beyond courtesy and genuinely sharing some secrets and not-to-be-confessed confidential information to build up trust as confidants and friends in the most socially realistic definition.
Sure, in any closed environments, there will be random debilitating rumors. They will undoubtedly break relationships and cause tension within the dorms. But every opportunity for schism can also be seen as a chance of unity in a different perspective. Hate (and in some cases, love) for a common person unite people of different interests and backgrounds, and often the most simple complaints and confessions transcend any sort of cultural difference.
As long as I do not find myself in the position of an instigator of any conflicts, the dorm life should stay peaceful and harmonious. But if no one instigates anything, how boring would the dorm life be? Efforts to establish and maintain peace can be thought of as true maturity, but wouldn’t the much more laborious efforts to deal with and settle existing violent conflicts be even more certain symbols of maturity? Either way, striking the balance between “peace” and “excitement” will be interesting to watch...
And finally, a closing comment on becoming a complete foreigner again. As shown by the blind following of Harry Potter (which I watched last weekend) and Transformers (watched last last weekend) shows, being American does bring certain advantages. But the arrogance of being from America and Yale would indeed lead to my being perceived as arrogant no matter what I do. Avoiding scything remarks and connecting others without showing American cultural-centrism will be the key to succeeding abroad socially.
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