Word: dorm
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Studying, the activity that this world wants her to want to do, might be a way of climbing out into some sort of fresh air and freedom. But the interruptions and the noise that make dorm life what it is make studying impossible. The constant noise creates a constant non-transcendant now and here. The roar of meals, the music other people use as futile anodynes for the same conditions, the telephones, the feet, the piano in the lower regions, the voices and the plumbing make the space she is sitting in come alive as a huge, swaying, indifferent body...
Instead of screaming there is eating. The typical freshman gains fifteen pounds in her first year of dorm life. Girls coming home after dates roam the kitchens looking for snacks. People eat ravenously at dinner as they discuss how fat they are getting and how bad the food is. By over-eating people repeat the vicious circle operating in all parts of dorm life: poor conditions cause strains which are temporarily relieved by aggravating the conditions...
Competitiveness and the making of comparisons are diseases of the imagination that come from being surrounded by people you see in bits and hear about in pieces. You can't look too long at anyone in a dorm; you have to keep circulating. You have to avoid real participation in the other people's lives; the way you do it is by talking. One would think that among all the talking going on in a Radcliffe dorm there must by the laws of probability be some of the stuff called intellectual conversation, though no one's really sure what that...
Girls themselves are under a splotlight when they got out or have visitors. In each dorm there is a cadre of people who hang around the bells desk, serving their own purposes but also observing all the comings and goings. Everyone knows who everyone else spends time with and talks about it in the interest of friendship. Some girls pick their dates for their friends rather than themselves. Girls who don't go out at all feel miserable and inferior. They are instantly typed...
What happens is that the conditions of the dorm limit people's ability to make their own choices. The individual is subordinated to the rules, to the pressure of friends, to the harrassment of the crowd. The worrying about work is a sign that the individual can't find out, much less fulfill, her potentialities. Instead, she adopts the common standard and resorts to comparisons to measure her own worth. Her initiative is cut off. She needs friends to an artificially-heightened degree, and the reliance on friends promotes conformity and excessive hunting for security. The groups of friends that...