Ted Kluck: Imperfect dorms

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, WORLD Opinions contributor Ted Kluck reflects on dorm rooms, interior design, and unrealistic expectations.

TED KLUCK: When I moved into my college dorm room in the mid-1990s I arrived with a couple of bags of clothes, a few posters, an old black-and-white television…oh, and a few pieces of wood to build a bunk bed.

We all lived in the same rectangular cell and used the same utilitarian community bathroom down the hall. It was absolutely disgusting most of the time. Our rooms each bore some semblance of our personalities but were nothing special—and I went to college with rich kids. We all had the same university-issued desks, the same university-issued analog phone, and a closet. If you were really clever, you’d put the TV in the closet to save space and situate your gross futon underneath the bunk to create a so-called “study area” where we really just played Bill Walsh Football on a Sega Genesis.

Needless to say, nobody went to our university for the nice rooms. The utilitarian aesthetic was part of the charm. It had a bit of a social-strata-leveling effect—whether your dad was a renowned vascular surgeon, a pastor, or a mechanic, your room was basically trash.

In this regard, my college experience was a lot more like my dad’s in the 1960s than my son’s—who just graduated. Many of his classmates operated under the spell of “DormFluencers.” They give out advice, selling dorm-related products of all kinds, and even doing personalized design appointments to help teens and their parents stave off institutional blasé—creating the dorm room of their very special dreams.

What happened after my generation went to college in gross dorm rooms in the 1990s, was that we got married, had kids, and then set about spoiling them rotten. We wrapped them in existential bubble wrap, making sure they never failed, they were never hurt or disappointed, they always got “A’s,” and apparently, surrounded by awesome dorm rooms. In return we now throw up our collective hands in exasperation when they call us, sobbing, after some big meanie of a professor has the absolute audacity to give them a “B.”

You see, what my generation has done—with its obsession of perfecting the imperfect dorm room—is create an expectation in our children that their college experiences will be perfect. Even though the very thing that was charming and noteworthy about our own college experiences was the fact that they were fabulously imperfect! We had bad dates. Our outfits were tacky and dumb. We didn’t love every professor, and the professors, in turn, didn’t always love us. We got “B’s” sometimes and lived to tell about it. Our comforters didn’t match the upholstery on our garage-sale Futons and it didn’t matter. Also, our parents basically didn’t care. Because what they sought to build in us was a sense of independence, which they rightly thought might serve us a little in the years to follow.

And because the rooms themselves weren’t perfect havens of rest we were forced to actually interact. And for most of us, those interactions were—in the end—the most valuable thing we got out of the four-year experience. Because of the communal bathrooms, I would always pause to flex my triceps in the skinny mirror belonging to a theology major in a room so neat you could eat off the floor. I figured I should actually say hello to him one day, and we’ve been talking pretty much non-stop for the last 30 years.

Because college in the 1990s wasn’t an exercise in customer service, it actually served us with best friends, character, and a little grit.

I’m Ted Kluck.

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