Dorm Life

[Mesabi]

Hi everybody. So I'm leaving for college again in a few weeks, and I was wondering how other people handle lego in college. For my first year of college, I brought a small bin, but later ordered some lego on eBay, which allowed me to have a small but significant collection for college. This year, I'm planning to bring a bit larger collection, but I was wondering what other people did for their college years. 

[ColletArrow]

USA College = UK University, am I correct? If so, I am also interested in other's experiences and solutions; I seem to have got myself a place in one in September, and have no idea how (if at all) I'm going to continue building in real bricks... Take a box of (probably technic) bricks and hope? Or is a more systematic approach better?

[samurai-turtle]

1 hour ago, ColletArrow said:

USA College = UK University, am I correct? 

Actually we (USA) has both. This should clear things up.

A four-year college or university offers a bachelor's degree. Programs that offer these degrees are called "undergraduate" schools. A "university" is a group of schools for studies after secondary school. At least one of these schools is a college where students receive a bachelor's degree".

 

I have no idea since I never went to college. But I would think keeping it small might be better for spacing reasons. 

[Mesabi]

So just to be clear, going to University is more or less the same as going to college.

Anyways, here's what I was able to bring to college.

Dorm life by North White, on Flickr

Dorm life by North White, on Flickr

All are full of lego, and are in my desk.

Anyone else have anything they want to show off?

[BaneShake]

When I was in college, I didn't bring anything with me, as all my non-essential stuff stayed with my parents. I shortly after grabbed a few items, like Wolverine's chopper fight set, and had them displayed on my small shelf. Then I brought in a few of my favorite DC figs with me, because I was missing them from before. Then I just said screw it and continued to buy new sets as I wanted them, all the while trying to cram them into the same very small shelf where there was no way to justify such clutter, so I had to start putting most of them in a drawer. Then I dropped out. That, uh, last one has no relation to the Lego stuff.

[jimmynick]

I only had a little bit of LEGO with me in my dorm (mostly messed about with LDD) but when I moved to an apartment I took a bit more with me.

[Elysiumfountain]

Of course being the weirdo that I am, I assembled and built this honking big MOC over the course of last Spring semester in my dorm, took it home for the summer and modified it, brought it back, and it surprisingly still fits on the shelf in my dorm room. I still get loads of people complimenting it! Sure, transporting is bleh but overall it hasn't been a problem. And then loads of Stud.io projects! 

Edit: This picture was taken over the summer. Haven't had time to take any pictures of this year yet!

Edited September 20, 2017 by Elysiumfountain

[ColletArrow]

You built that in a dorm room? How? How many bricks had you taken in order to assemble it? Had you planned it out digitally so you knew what parts you would need and just took them, or did you guess and take a load?

As I'm leaving for Uni on Saturday, I'm thinking about taking either a couple of small sets to force c-model imagination, or a box of technic parts (mainly 42006, 42004 and 8047). I'm not sure yet. I may even buy a new set (42061 perhaps) and start from scratch.

[Elysiumfountain]

It's about 5000-6000 pieces, most of them I brick linked while I was there, and then some of them I brought from home in a giant tub, and then sent the tub back. (I only live about 6 hours away from my school so it was easier to transport things). Our school dorm rooms have a desk and a weird bookshelf thing, so it lived on top of the bookshelf forever. It took several months for all the orders to arrive and stuff too. It depends on how much space you have, and how much you want to lug around with you lol! 

I found some in-progress pictures! I had forgotten that I had my statues in the room as well lol!

 

[Mesabi]

Jesus, @Elysiumfountain. You are insane! (In the good way) Your dorm must be huge if you can fit all that in it. I have so little space in mine, everything, books, papers, legos, foodstuffs. Is really just in piles. Fantastic build, By the way. I knew you were a decent builder, but I didn't know you were THAT good. 

[Elysiumfountain]

Thank you @Mesabi! Lol, I had a single room last year, so it was a little bit bigger than the double rooms. My school likes to squeeze a huge wardrobe, a bed, a desk, a chair, a bookcase, and two rubbish bins in per student. After that there's not much room left! Oh and add musical instruments to that! Music majors gotta work too

[ColletArrow]

Well I've moved into my new room for the year. It's actually pretty big on floor space, but I didn't bring any LEGO with me. My parents bought me a 31054 as a gift, so I'll have to get creative with those 73 pieces I suppose...

Maybe I'll bring a box back when I go home for Christmas.

[ShaydDeGrai]

On September 21, 2017 at 6:32 PM, Mesabi said:

Your dorm must be huge if you can fit all that in it. I have so little space in mine, everything, books, papers, legos, foodstuffs. Is really just in piles. 

Having worked in academia, I think most dorm rooms are tiny by design.  I remember when they were building a new dorm and there was great debate over how many people it should house.  At that time the campus average was about 65 square feet of living space per student (usually in the form of a 10x6.5 ft "closet single" or a 10x13' double.  

From that 65 square feet, you usually lost 9 to the swing of the door, 18 to the bed, 16 to the desk and chair, 8 to a wardrobe or closet, and 4 to a bookcase (the standard furnishings), leaving about 10 square feet open to move around in (half the time it felt like you had to go out into the hall just to get the elbow room to change your mind).  Doubles often felt roomier because it was common practice to stack the beds into bunkbeds to reclaim a little space.  

The architects of the new dorm has allotted 100 square feet per person and when the plans were first shown to the administration, the admin people complained that the "doubles" seemed too small and there were too many "triples", because they assumed, from the size, that what the architect intended as the singles were "so big" they must be doubles, and a 10x20 foot room was surely intended to house three people, not just two.  When the faculty were asked for their input, the overwhelming opinion was that if you made dorm rooms too big, it would just invite clutter, personal refrigerators, personal electronics, partying, guests crashing on floor-space, personal furniture (some of which would likely get abandoned at the end of the year and B&G would have to remove and dispose of) etc.  They really pushed back hard on the idea that the space should be cramped enough that students are using the space for cloths, books, sleeping and little else.

It's really hard to MOC under those conditions.  You can usually get away with a mid-sized kit now and then (assuming you can ship it home when your done) and I knew people who did this, but once you got past a shoebox or two worth of parts space really became an issue for most people.  

Of course this was before the days when one Kindle might be replacing a dozen textbooks, so maybe you'd have room for three shoeboxes of parts these days.

It's really amazing that ElysiumFountain was able to produce that MOC if his living conditions were anything like what we had.

 

[KotZ]

I just graduated in May and I remember dorm life like it was yesterday. Oh man, my dorm was a nightmare; I got bed bugs four times because my university couldn't fix the issue. I didn't take any LEGO with me, but I bought at least one set at the end of each semester, and when I lived in my frat house I had a few LEGO sitting about.

[Mesabi]

14 hours ago, KotZ said:

I just graduated in May and I remember dorm life like it was yesterday. Oh man, my dorm was a nightmare; I got bed bugs four times because my university couldn't fix the issue.

 That's awful man. My university has it's problems, but bugs aren't one of them, fortunately. Being up north in the cold helps.

[KotZ]

6 hours ago, Mesabi said:

 That's awful man. My university has it's problems, but bugs aren't one of them, fortunately. Being up north in the cold helps.

Welcome to the south!

[ColletArrow]

Hmm. Somehow I don't think Wales in October is going to suffer that problem!
My room isn't small in terms of floor space, but that could be because it's got barely anything in it. The wardrobe is built into the wall, for instance, appearing to take up less space.

I still haven't got any bricks to play with. I'm contemplating getting a small technic set or something at the weekend, but we'll see. I'm quite happy puddling about in LDD at the moment.

[Elysiumfountain]

I just found a picture of my dorm room from when I was building my MOC! Last Spring, that is (I think since I had a single room it had more floor space but less space to move around). My solution was to basically use every available desktop, the top of the wardrobe, and the bookcase to stack things on! (I also forgot that I had my art project in the room at the same time).