Staying away from home isn’t easy, but it’s not exactly difficult either. A hostel experience promises not only good memories, but also a great pedestal to step into an individual and adult lifestyle. Life at the GITAM hostel is interesting to say the least. For the ones who are experiencing the hostel environment for the first time, it’s a huge changeover and is an experience to be reminisced about. We’d been living in a cocoon of comfort at home, where our every need had been met on command; our parents preparing us earlier on for the upcoming challenge of surviving alone. The sudden shift of lifestyle is not acknowledged so early (at least it wasn’t for most of us), but rather those early days and weeks are spent worrying about just making it to the end of the day.We learn to adapt and adjust.
The days go by in a blur: making it to all the classes, getting a proper meal –whether it’s at the mess hall or the shiny new canteens, doing the necessary chores (because mothers aren’t available to remind us anymore, so the responsibility is inevitably inherited onto ourselves), and still finding enough time to kick back and relax. We also find ourselves meeting new people; lots of them. And so, it’s almost like an extended camping trip; only in this case we return home for the vacations instead of the other way round.
Homesickness is something that doesn’t start right away. It starts when we inadvertently start comparing the routine at hostel to that at home. So we begin to realize that things are easier (and hence better) at home and start counting the days till we get to pack our bags, hop onto a train home and return to the lap of the luxury. The major pro of a hostel is the lack of nosy neighbours and peeping toms. Anything goes; you can get away with doing whatever you wish, without offending anyone. Some of the wildest experiences include: blasting pop music around 11 pm on a weekday, sleeping in on Sunday mornings till noon or even longer, midnight snacking with roommates, the collective dislike for the mess food, music in the common bath area, pretending to be unfazed by half-naked people in the corridors, random dance parties, skipping sleep for a Harry Potter movie marathon (who even needs sleep in that case?), showering at 12:30 am or late, getting super excited for outings, secret birthday parties that include cake, balloons, glitter, gifts and treats (which have to be