Podcast

*Intro music*

 

       Have you ever dreamed about what it would be like to live off campus?

 

*Dream Sequence Music*

 

       No roommate, no dining hall and no public restrooms or showers. Well this dream is a reality for me…

 

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       But it’s not quite as glamorous as it seems. Advancing on from high school to college has been the hardest transition I’ve ever had to make. And as an off campus student, four and a half hours from home, it’s hard to meet new people, make friends and feel like I belong on campus. And I’ve found that many off campus students agree. Mostly because a large majority of students do live on campus and, by the time classes start, have already made friends within their dorm community. When, students like me are just walking around in a sea full of strangers.

 

“It’s really difficult being an off campus student.  I have to worry about grades and studying and all that and also rent, food, I have to worry about my job my family and sometimes it gets really overwhelming”

 

       These off campus students need a place where they can feel like they belong, somewhere where they can find that sense of community that the students who live in dorms know all too well. But, where are we supposed to find it? It took me awhile but I found my sense of community in Western’s Red Square. Red Square is a large brick square that’s surrounded on all sides by academic buildings. This square has served as a place for students to relax and just be themselves for years as it serves its purpose as the free speech area on campus, it’s also used as transportation to get from one side of campus to the other. I think that because Red Square is surrounded by academic buildings and it’s where people go to voice their opinions, it makes Red Square a comfortable place to be. When most students are either rushing to classes or studying. It doesn’t matter if you’re a first year dorm student or you’ve been living off campus for two years, we are all students. And Red Square brings the simplicity of why we’re all actually here back into focus, there aren’t stereotypes or constraints, it’s the free speech area and it has the ability to free students as well.

 

*Transition Music*

 

       When you’re an off campus student there’s an ever present uncertainty of where to go between classes. There’s usually too much time to go to class, but not enough time to go home and we don’t have the opportunity to go back to dorm communities and just hangout so where do we go? What do we do?...

 

“I usually try to find somewhere on campus where I can hang out and do something while I wait for my next class cause I don’t really have enough time to go anywhere  so I end up just sittin’ somewhere on campus waiting for my next class to start. Um, I always eat in between classes like anytime I have time in between classes I eat because you know food.”

 

       Usually I find myself sitting outside the Humanities building in Red Square. I see this as “my place”. Lynn Staeheli sometimes describes place as a social location, this means that your place provokes a sense of belonging of being in place. I feel this way when I’m in Red Square. And if you’re an off campus student listening to me drone on about Red Square and place I hope you find that sense of community somewhere within your university too. It’s important to have somewhere when so many of us are far away from all of our friends and family.

 

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       I would like to say thank you to all the people who have helped me make this podcast possible. Freesound.org for the sound effects, Logan Hieronymus for letting me interview him, and my good friend Rylie Mansuetti for sending me her answers to questions all the way from Reno.