things that are on every college campus i've visited that you should probably include in your college au
- bulletin boards… ALL OF THEM, COVERED IN OUTDATED ANNOUNCEMENTS AND UGLY FURNITURE FOR SALE AND THOSE ‘PULL OFF’ POSTER THINGS WITH LIKE, ONE SCRAGGLY ONE LEFT
- bike racks
- not enough parking spots, and really expensive parking stickers/passes
- that one building that isn’t handicap accessible so theres no elevator and hella stairs, and you have a class on the third floor
- the overly-inquisitive cafeteria worker, who actually wants to know about your day and your plans, a good counterbalance to the cafeteria worker who hates their fucking job so much you can hear them bitching about everything as they wipe down tables or whatever
- keycard access to dorm buildings. seriously. if they don’t have to swipe to get into the dorms, they’re not at college.
- unnecessary emails. so many. emails from departments you’ve never heard of for events that don’t involve you, “news” emails that you delete without opening, and all the important ones you need to read filter right into your spam folder
- peak internet hours, when everyone is on, and it slows to a crawl
- that one broken washer that floods and never seems to get fixed and that everyone just avoids using
- that club that always seems to be fundraising or selling things or soliciting whatever or signing people up and they’re always at a table by the cafeteria or inside the student center and they’re always like five people at the table and they have the ugliest posterboard advertising whatever they do
- a building that hasn’t been updated or fixed or anything since the 1960s. asbestos tiles, awkwardly sized classrooms, wtf color bathroom tiles (seriously, like mint green and salmon, wtf), if it was a thing in the 50s/60s this building has it and also slightly uneven stairs and stupidly heavy front doors
theres more, i’m sure, but this is what i can think of
- that one person on the dorm floor that talks to EVERYONE and has a weird idea of boundaries
- teenagers’ utter failure to wash dishes aka the communal kitchen in the building fills up with dirty dishes in the sink
- people who make the most amount of noise as possible at a certain time of night, yelling or banging on walls or generally being crazy
- that one dude who has arguments with his parents/girlfriend/whatever over the phone all the time and you can hear him clearly even though he’s in his room with the door closed
- conversely, that one person that always has their door open
- the insane mishmash of conversations in the cafeteria: stupid conversations about dumb shit like internet memes and fandom and things you watched on cartoon network when you were 10, conversations about relationships/drama/all that stuff, and serious conversations about philosophy or business or the merits of such and such a thing discussed in class
- terrible terrible terrible slabs of processed meat labeled as “steak” or “turkey” but which are better classified as “probably not really steak” and “possibly turkey”
- RAs. People always seem to forget that dorms have RAs in college AUs.
- Theme Houses — dude, Les Amis would totally all live in a theme house together
- beds that are impossible to get into without a running jump or a stool of some sort
- That one (non-cafeteria) food place on campus that EVERYONE goes to and it’s pretty much always loud and hot and full of people
- That one cafeteria station that’s your fallback if everything else looks gross because at least this one is trustworthy (aka the deli station)
Also, yeah, I’m always super confused when characters from different dorm buildings just waltz into each other’s buildings. You need a keycard to get into different dorm buildings and you can only get into yours.
- that crew in the lounge who play cards against humanity until obscene hours of the morning
- the confused delivery person who you didn’t order but neither did no one else
- the one person who is always forced to order the delivery and interact with the delivery people even if they’re not paying for it
- the room of dudes who adore scarface and generally make you kind of uncomfortable
- that professor you never realized was into punk rock
- that professor who pays for pizza