Rule Breakers

Quiet time was the subject of my last post, and my struggle to find some of that illustrious time. We all need our quiet time, no matter who we are. Way back at the beginning of the school year, all five of us housemates sat down to discuss rules and things we'd like to see happen. As part of our residence expectations, we had to fill out a housemate agreement form. It had all different rules and regulations on it that were about living with roommates. It had things like how often would the floors be mopped, and we all had to agree on the answer. Not only was it about the house and cleaning, but about the living situation. There were questions about quiet hours, weekends, and music, and much more. As a residence itself, Clark enforces no set quiet hours during the year. Mostly every rule is decided upon by the people living in the individual houses. So, as a collective group, who have already known each other for a year, we went through the list and everyone signed their lives away on this ordinary piece of yellow paper.

That was 6 months ago. Things change. First and for most, that paper we all signed has been taken away. The residence assistant took it from us as soon as we had completed it, and we have yet to see it since. I suppose it's her way of having some control over us; she holds the copy of our rules we made. I have no idea what we agreed on or any of the rules, save maybe a few. All I know is that we don't follow them quite so well. Of course we all try to, but we usually fail. I think the rule that we break most often is the quiet hours or study time rules. We did agree on the fact that after about 11 p.m., we were going to quiet down for the night. I usually hunker down in my room after about 10 for the night, in my pyjamas with my homework. The same can't be said for my roomies. They are often in and out after 11, downstairs to another unit and back, and then gone again. This wouldn't be quite so bad, if the front door didn't slam, shaking my whole room and often waking me up if it's later. I know for a fact that I've mentioned this in the past about holding the door and stopping it from slamming. Now, if they could only remember this.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/abr1216l.jpg

It also doesn't help that we have a bell on the door handle from Christmas still. I mentioned in an early post about our obsession with holiday decorations, and this bell is one of those decorations. So, you don't get only a slamming door, but ringing bells. I've contemplated taking the bells off the door, but someone would most likely put up a fight about it. The rules are a thing of the past I suppose; it is hard to follow them when we don't know what they were originally. A little part of me wants to go ask for the rules from the RA and show them to my roommates, just for a little satisfaction.