Dorm mysteries

Overall, I'm finding life in a tiny dorm room not such a big deal. It helps to have moved to it from a studio apartment - it isn't requiring that much of an adjustment. And, despite the coils, the mattress now strikes me as normal, leading me to wonder what kind of cloud from heaven the plush Queen I'll be returning to will seem like. And initially, the presence of these coils was my main complaint about dorm life, so all is well.

Still, some mysteries remain:

-The thing with the lights. The hallway lights, for example, are on the timer system, such that as soon as you're about to get out your room key and enter with, for example, a pot of pasta, or a few bags of heavy groceries, all of a sudden, you're in the dark. There's essentially no natural light in the hall, so this is the case at all hours. This is, I suppose, the opposite end of the spectrum of those shops that leave on their display-window lights even when closed. A happy medium would be ideal.

The commitment to shutting lights is not merely structural, but shared by the students, who dutifully shut the non-timer-system, i.e. normal on-off, light in the communal bathroom once they're done. What they fail to realize, however, is that perhaps someone else in another stall is not yet done. It's only a matter of time in the dorm until one finds one's self on the toilet in dark, which is not the world's most delightful experience.

-The stream of ants that recently passed through my room, only to migrate to greener pastures in the shower area. Why do we now have ants? Is it ant season?

-The juxtaposition of signs everywhere about an upcoming extermination project (complete with graphic drawings of nasty-looking roaches and rats; ants are to be tolerated, presumably) and the process of communal-fridge-cleaning in the kitchen, which is supposed to involve food being thrown out but which instead involves all the food that anyone thought perishable enough to put in the fridge being placed out on surfaces in the kitchen.

-The presence of crying babies at random times. The students here are not of the babies-having-babies variety. Where do these babies come from?