Paritosh Gaiwak
Paritosh Gaiwak
The graduate life is a mixture of tremendous pressure and exposure to the latest research, ensuring a basic level of survival and living life to the fullest, always exploring new dimensions of life.
Nothing can be achieved if a person does not have a proper shelter. One may live in a makeshift arrangement for a while, but in the long run, such a system is not feasible. A stable residence ensuring proper amenities is necessary; only then is there a possibility of a student excelling in every dimension. Especially in grad life, the learning curve is very steep, and one can’t learn and assimilate if they are worried about residence.
A compromise may work out in the long run, but necessities like electricity and Wi-Fi at residence are an absolute must in student life.
International graduate students usually don’t live on campus. This is mainly because most of the students have taken a loan back in their country for paying the tuition fee to the university. The heavy interest rates coupled with the currency conversion ratio make it extremely difficult for the students and their families to allow them to live on campus. Considering the proximity to the university, a major chunk of the graduate students living off campus lives in the residential complexes on Avent Ferry Road.
Due to proximity to both main campus and Centennial Campus, Champion Court is one of the most popular destinations. Further, courtesy of the Wolfline, if one lives anywhere on the Avent Ferry or Crest Road, the campuses can be reached quite conveniently.
Right from Champion Court to Gorman Street, a lot of residential complexes are occupied by graduate students. The students living off Gorman Street are at a disadvantage when the distance from the campuses is considered, however this is made up for by the proximity to the Food Lion and Dollar Tree stores near their houses.
While relatively cheaper than on-campus living, off-campus housing is in no way cheap when compared to the typical income of a graduate student. Therefore, a typical arrangement includes a handful of friends or acquaintances first forming a group and then deciding on the location of residence.
This has the multi-fold advantage of allowing students to live comfortably while sharing the rent and other amenities and a degree of familiarity with the people they live with. This familiarity in a foreign land breeds a sense of security which is very important. However, the practical difficulties are also numerous, especially because a student must deal with people in an unfamiliar environment.
I remember when my current roommates and I had decided on our residence; the next big task was completing the formalities. We were dealing with a property management agency, and the first formality was signing the lease. This was a new experience for me and reading the lease carefully was a challenging task.
But, the difficult part came when we had to buy the property insurance. In this we were particularly unfortunate. First, the property insurance agent asked a lot of questions over a telephone conversation with me. On that day the agency was pretty busy and we were told to wait again and again. After trying four times, I was so fed up that I asked my friends to deal with it and gave them my card number. I still remember the enormous amount of frustration I faced while doing it.
The beginning is only a part of the challenges faced. Living off campus comes with a set of difficulties. For instance, in many houses on Avent Ferry Road there are a lot of roaches, including my own. They create a mess all the time.
In our case, probably because we bought second-hand furniture, there was a bed-bug plague across the house. Only when my poor roommate discovered bite marks allover his body did we become aware of that. Luckily, the bugs did not pay attention to me.
It cost us a lot of time and $345 to treat the bug problem.
In most residential complexes a pest control takes place at least once a month, for which we need to clean the entire ground floor (mainly the kitchen). The effectiveness of such a control is debatable, nonetheless we must comply with the norms. In the middle of the semester, this can be a real pain as most graduate students have a very busy schedule and don’t have the time.
Maintenance issues need to be reported quickly, or else you may have to pay for it yourself. Broken doors, hinges, etc., all need to be brought to the notice of the property management agency.
Overall the graduate housing is no less than a struggle in itself and one must go through it for a peaceful survival. Without properly dealing with it, students cannot excel academically or professionally.