So...living in a uni hall hasn't been great. It hasn't been bad either! It allowed me to find great friends and has been a great transitional home in between living with my parents and living completely independently. But there's been some issues. It's expensive as hell, (almost 2000 a month, around 460 a week) and isn't worth this cost. I don't like the food, I'm pretty much living off of a vending machine and then complaining that my hair is falling out. I don't like the people I live with, it's really cliquey.
My friends and I have been having issues with some of the rules around here. We're treated like children but expected to behave like adults. We've gotten in trouble before for sneaking friends in and drinking spirits, which is just frustrating because we're all adults who pay a lot of money to live here, why should we have to sneak friends in? Why can't we drink spirits, we're all of age. We got a formal warning for smoking weed inside and had it on our records even though we literally didn't. I wouldn't be mad about this if we'd actually been doing it, but we always smoke outside. The night manager showed up, yelled at us because she could smell weed outside our door, and now it's on our record. The entire floor smells like weed, all the time. It comes in through the vents from floors above and floors below. It didn't even smell like weed. But now it's on our record, based on a smell. No evidence. The way the staff handle conflict is frustrating. They're unfair (we watched a guy ask the night manager for his vape back in the elevator, she gave it to him, and then laughed when he called her "a good cunt" When my friend got her vape taken off her, the night manager yelled at her, told her she was the only person in this hall with two formal warnings, told her she wouldn't be able to get into second-year halls because of this, and was super rude to her) they straight-up lie to us (I pressed the emergency exit button to sneak our friend in, and then she screamed at us that we broke the door. I pushed a button. The door was fine. And my friend isn't the only person in the hall with two formal warnings. People have broken roof tiles, a toilet, pulled the rail off the elevator, broke someone's hand, and got an underage person so drunk she got alcohol poisoning.) and they sit us down to have meetings like children.
Just little, annoying things, that wouldn't be an issue if we weren't paying 2000 a month. We're supposed to live in the hall until november, but my friends and I are tired of living here. We've been looking for flats, but getting a flat is very difficult in Wellington. It's very expensive here and you're competeing with thousands of students to find a place. I pictured my friends and I living in a dingy student flat with no heating, moldy, and damp. But at least we'd have a place! But I found a really good flat, very spacious, right in the middle of the city and only a 20 min walk to uni. I emailed the landlady right away and my friends and I had a chat and decided we wanted to move out early. Then we had a flat viewing, the landlady liked us, and we ended up accepting the flat.
And then everything went downhill. One friend pulled out, we were panicking trying to budget and find a way to pay the deposit, 2 weeks rent in advance, plus the costs our hall gave us for moving out early. AND THEN the the head of hall calls us in and says actually we can't move out. 2 weeks ago the uni accommodation service updates its rules and if you move out past the halfway point, you have to keep paying the halls rent, even if you're not living in it.
So we're stuck here. I'm disappointed we can't have our flat. I'm pissed that we have to stay here because of a rule change we were never made aware of, we never signed a contract or anything. It's not all bad. The hall doesn't seem so awful now that the head of hall clarified the things on our record aren't even on our record, it was the night manager lying again. He says we'll all get good references as the rules we've broke are small and hasn't put anyone in danger. We explained the weed situation to him and he just said "next time you smoke outside, don't bring the smell in with you." Pretty funny coming from an ex cop. And second year halls are open over summer and as we want to stay, it gives the second year halls more reason to accept us. So we'll apply to live in a hall of residence again next year, which are basically groups of 5 bedroom apartments, self catered, and surely we can move out whenever we want, so when a good flat becomes available, we can take it.
Fuck, adulting is hard.
