Romantic notions shattered by moisissure

The end of the dorm era has, at last, arrived. I'm nearly 28 years old, so about time, too. The contents of my room did apparently fit in luggage, save for items it wouldn't have made sense to bring, such as one gigantic if now twice pre-owned mini-fridge I was not entrepreneurial enough to try to sell. I watched as one by one, nice-seeming and nice-looking French 50-year-olds arrived in what I can only guess were nice cars to pick up their intellectually Supérieur 20-ish offspring and their stuff. This immediately brought back for me how it would go at the end of the year in college, when kids from the Midwest would just haul everything into the minivan, when the fools from carless NY families who at 17 had had romantic notions about getting to know other regions of the country had to figure out, at 21, how to get years' worth of stuff (and books!) back via an ATA flight. Where was my pickup? Over by the Gare de l'Est, effectively.

Not back home just yet though. I'm now in German university housing - a guest house and not a dorm - and the contrast between the two establishments could not be greater. Every possible cliché about the value placed on cleanliness in the two countries is supported by the way these two buildings are kept up. Here, there's a mix of near-continuous cleaning service and ubiquitous lists of instructions to keep your room and the common areas clean. (The staff, it seems, will clean but not "tidy.")

Meanwhile, back in Paree, an egg that had been dropped/thrown in the staircase still remained, weeks after the fact. That which is smeared on the walls of the communal bathrooms isn't going anywhere. Two of the most basic facts about keeping a bathroom functional - stocking it regularly with toilet paper and having a sink that actually runs water - were beyond the capacity of the powers that be. (Train restrooms and other public toilets began to seem pristine.) For reasons I will never understand, the janitor responsible for the kitchen would put only one of the two possible jumbo garbage bags in before the weekend, during which time the kitchen trash is not taken out, meaning that when he'd return on (optimistically) Monday, the kitchen would be basically a trash heap, however well-meaning the residents. The ideal of students cleaning up after themselves - always, with college students, an ideal at best - was rendered futile by the fact that so many people were sharing each kitchen that the moment one person/group finished up, the next needed and had already begun using the limited burners and counter-space, leaving a layer of grime beyond what a quick scrub on off-hours might fix. The showers were so moldy that, it was agreed, one left dirtier than one entered.

All came full circle when, when I asked about the check-out procedure, I was told, in the tone of someone scolding a child, to "nettoyez bien" my room - the standard instructions, and ostensibly there's a fee if you don't - and of course what was going through my mind was how, when I arrived, the room I'd been assigned contained the previous resident's (s'?) food and drink containers, towel, assorted other garbage, and, oh, used pad.

Also generally agreed upon by internationals: the dorm was disastrous by Western if not all-but-refugee-camp standards. As in, this was not, as might be suspected, a case of a bunch of entitled Americans, accustomed to air conditioning and cable television, large suites, plush beds, and a coffee shop serving iced soy lattes downstairs. The only Americans - the only grad students, period - who'd think to sign up for this kind of exchange (i.e. at ~30, living in a Parisian college dorm) are quite low-maintenance. Which made for a great group of people, actually, but which also meant that when anyone did complain, the complaints were pretty legit.

Overall, the semester was... a mix. I'd swing back and forth between thinking OMG free room in the center of Paris, with all the glamor that implies, all the proximity to primary sources and primo croissants it came through with... and thinking that the living conditions were a bit much to ask, even by grad-student-in-expensive-city standards. There's this notion - again, romantic - about grad students, held by society at large, as well as those who were once grad students themselves (although with this latter group, there's perhaps a touch of, 'if I had to do it...') that they should live in squalor, that any revulsion the grad student expresses about said squalor is a sign that the person's not cut out for a life of the mind. So I realize that the above description of Parisian dorm life will be met with a giant 'meh', and advice from the Dear Prudences of the world that if I wanted Paris and sanitary living conditions, I ought to have chosen a different career path and taken occasional vacations to hotels where, optimistically, filth would not be such an issue.