By Hannah Webb | Opinion Editor
Student housing is often framed as a logistical concern: square footage, location, air conditioning that may or may not work when it matters most. Conversations orbit move-in dates, move-out deadlines, room checks and key returns. We talk about housing as something we endure before graduating into “real life,” a waiting room rather than a formative space. But that framing misses something essential. Housing is temporary, but the habits you build inside it are not.
Dorm rooms and shared apartments function like small laboratories of adulthood. They are imperfect, crowded and often uncomfortable by design. You learn quickly that no one is coming to enforce bedtime or remind you to eat vegetables. In that absence, habits quietly step in to fill the void. How you wake up, how you respond to mess, how you treat shared space, how you handle tension — these patterns begin to solidify long before you realize they are becoming yours.
There is a strange intimacy to shared living. You see people at their least curated, half-asleep, stressed, sick, celebratory, careless. In these moments, you absorb lessons about what you tolerate and what you correct. Do you let resentment simmer until it spills over, or do you address discomfort early? Do you retreat inward when conflict arises, or do you practice the awkward art of conversation? Housing teaches you whether you default to avoidance or accountability, and those defaults rarely stay confined to a dorm room.
The habits we build over time are particularly telling. In housing, time feels elastic — nights stretch late, mornings arrive early and responsibilities blur together. Some students learn how to structure their days despite the chaos, creating rhythms that protect sleep, work, fun and rest. Others learn how easy it is to live reactively, letting noise, stress and social pressure dictate their schedules. Both are habits. One simply costs more in the long run.
Shared spaces also expose our relationship with responsibility. When a kitchen belongs to everyone, it is easy to believe it belongs to no one. Dishes pile up, trash waits an extra day. The question quietly emerges: will you clean because it needs to be done, or only when someone asks? That distinction — between internal and external motivation — matters far beyond housing. It shapes how people approach jobs, relationships and communities. Habits of care do not begin when space becomes permanent; they begin when it becomes shared.
There is also the habit of presence. Housing places you in proximity to others without guaranteeing connection. Some students learn to fill every silence with noise, afraid to sit alone in a crowded place. Others learn how to be present — to knock on a door, to sit in the common room, to notice when someone has withdrawn. These are not grand gestures; they are small, repeated decisions that form the muscle memory of community. Long after you leave student housing, that muscle remains.
Of course, not all habits formed in housing are healthy. Some students learn how to survive rather than how to live — how to shut down, to disappear, to minimize their needs. Housing can be isolating, especially for those who never feel fully at home in assigned spaces. But even those coping mechanisms are habits, and recognizing them is the first step toward unlearning them. Temporary spaces have a way of revealing long-term patterns, whether we want them to or not.
We often comfort ourselves by saying, “It’s just for now.” Just this year. Just this roommate. Just this room. And while that is true in a literal sense, it can become an excuse to disengage. If the place you’re living is merely something to get through, then it does not feel worth investing in how we show up within it. But the irony is that the investment pays dividends elsewhere. The habits you build in temporary places are often the ones you carry into permanent ones.
One day, the key will be returned, the room emptied, the door closed for the last time. But the habits — how you care for space, how you manage conflict, how you live with others — will walk out with you. Housing ends. Formation does not. And that may be the most important thing we fail to acknowledge when we talk about where we students live.
