"When you live in a dorm, you really don't have to worry about anything because it's all provided for you," Cedar Greens resident and public relations junior Annabelle Julien said.  "You don't have to buy your own toilet paper because they have it downstairs. So really just being able to budget and being able to understand the responsibilities of actually living in the space that you own [and] have to pay for."

Balancing a budget is yet another task students must master when no longer in dorms. The costs of these extra necessities pile up with rent, utilities and security deposits, making off-campus living a balancing act. It can be an especially tall order when students don’t have previous experiences with handling finances. 

"I am the main person on our lease and for all the utilities, everybody else is a cosigner," Julien said. "So making sure that I check my email regularly, that I don't miss a payment, that I'm communicating with roommates early enough in advance and everything else, has been a huge responsibility, just like learning how to budget and how to be aware of how much money you're spending. I was grateful enough that when I was living in the dorms, that my parents were paying for it, but since then, I decided that I was going to take on more responsibility and pay for the apartment to kind of lessen the burden. And I feel like it's really helping me with just responsibility and kind of learning how to survive in the real world, which is what college is all about."

This juggling routine of new responsibilities, although shocking, can give students a taste of the real world.

"[It’s] definitely a learning curve," Julien said. "After the first time I went grocery shopping, I freaked out and said that I wasn't gonna go for another three weeks. Just getting into it and realizing how much things cost — and there are certain things, like utility bills, you're going to spend money on, electricity, especially if your oven is electric, which we have. I think it's just been an adjustment period. Now that I'm into it, I feel like I've got a good routine and obviously there are some weeks where I feel like I'm spending so much money compared to others, but I feel like it all balances out in the end.”

Along with the responsibility of budget and other costs, living conditions are put on students' shoulders as they leave the dorm nests.

"There is definitely a difference in upkeep," Landings at Chandler Crossings resident and journalism sophomore Allison Sheets said. "I think the level of comfort with that varies from person to person. I'm a very clean person, so being able to vacuum and clean my whole bathroom like every four days, that's what makes me feel good. As for me and my personal space, I find it very easy to maintain. The shared spaces are obviously a different story."

Kitchens, bathrooms and more can be a completely different ballgame than just sharing a bedroom, which students may already have experience with.

"Especially in the kitchen, it's just little things that you have to get used to," Sheets said. "I think I probably wasn't used to it until, like, two weeks ago, that I truly started to settle in. [The kitchen] has been a little bit more tough because it's all four of us. Sometimes that can get frustrating because it's like, I would like to use the sink, but both sides are full of dishes. But, I think those are the situations where you have to come at it with a lot of grace, where it's like, we're all just college kids and we're busy and things are going to get hectic and somebody's going to forget to do the dishes for a while and maybe just send them a text and be like, 'Hey man, can you do the dishes at some point?' And then it'll all get figured out."

With more square footage comes more room for error. For Sheets and her roommates, it was a smoky stove, pink hair dye staining the bathrooms, burn marks, stained carpets, carpets smelling of cigarette smoke, missing furniture and more. When maintenance can be less than timely, Sheets took matters into her own hands.

"I've had to replace some stuff myself," Sheets said. "When I moved in, my toilet seat was covered in [dye]. It was so bad and old that my dad visited me, and he was like, 'Yep, we're just going to get a new one,' [and] got a new one for my roommate because hers had a similar issue. We have been begging to get new carpet, [and] we bought our own barstools because we were missing them when we moved in. We put in a maintenance request like two months ago, saying that we had problems with the carpet, problems with the stove, and we were missing furniture, and we still have not heard anything. It's livable, but it's not the most comfortable to deal with all the time.”

For 25 East resident and environmental biology junior Kalin Baldwin, the upkeep in the apartment is better than it was at home, now that she doesn’t have to take care of three pets. 

"It's definitely a lot easier here," Baldwin said. "When I lived at home, I did [the] majority of the cleaning. It's so much easier, and [cleaning] is something that I don't really have to worry about like every single day, which is nice. I clean pretty much as I go, I don’t like to let messes form. I'll do a deep clean about once every two weeks, where I'll deep clean my bathroom and I'll try to vacuum."

Maintenance was called for a broken washing machine upon move-in and took two weeks to bring the new one. Baldwin was also met with no shower rod, no window screen and closet doors that had fallen off.  

In response to the issues, Baldwin and her roommate bought their own shower rods, she propped the closet doors up on her wall and doesn’t open her window. 

"It's been pretty good, I feel like I've been able to keep up with everything," Baldwin said. "I'm really only here during the week. I go home pretty much every weekend, so I'm only here four days a week anyway."