Due to traditional gender roles, girls are more organized than boys (or at least they expected to be so). This being better organized includes them arranging their belongings in proper order as well as having their priorities sorted.
Now, hostel life has a certain degree of disarranged setup. In such a situation, the overall expectations from the hosteler clashes with that of an ideal girl. The confusion in terms of the expectation bar raises a lot of curiosity about life in a girl’s Hostel.
Life in a girl’s Hostel is a perfect blend of these two conflicting ideologies. While you will see the young women waking up late and idling away their time on weekends, you will also find them showering every day and investing the right amount of time in personal hygiene.
Indeed, the food in these hostels is often worse than that in the boy’s hostels. Also, the security norms are stricter, and many institutions have the system of taking attendance daily.
Top 14 Major Hostel Issues and Activities:
However, despite it all, anyone who has lived in a girl’s Hostel can vouch that those are the best years of her life.
Adhering to all the restrictions, women do manage to have a lot of fun and make hostel memories that they will cherish for the rest of their lives.
01. Less Violent Ragging:
The magnitude of ragging that takes place in a girls’ Hostel is much lesser than that in the boy’s Hostel. In most cases, the freshers here are made to sing, dance, or do ramp walk. Sometimes formal Rangoli or flower arrangement competitions are also organized.
This sort of harmless session helps in rapport building and enables establishing a healthy relationship among the seniors and juniors. Very rarely would one find every day or violent ragging activities taking place in a girls’ HostelHostel?
02. Bathroom fights:
Girls spend a considerably more considerable amount of time in the bathroom meeting their personal grooming needs.
With a limited number of washrooms available and most students having to leave for college at approximately the same time. It leads to fights over the bathroom being part and parcel of the girls’ everyday lives.
03. Poor Food:
Although this is a feature that is common to all hostels, it is particularly relevant in the case of girls’ hostels.
As the proportion of students in the girl’s HostelHostel is lesser than that in the boy’s, the former is subjected to a more considerable amount of neglect in terms of food.
Many girl students who choose to drop out of the Hostel do so because of the poor quality of food served there.
04. Late-night Junk Food Hogging:
The pathetic state of food served in the Hostel ensures that the students are perpetually hungry. The desire to avoid such hunger pangs leads to girls hoarding a lot of junk food and bunging on the same over the night.
Maggie and chips are the most famous midnight snacks among female hostelers. The preparation of Maggie is a task in itself, and many hostelers claim that their best hostel memories revolve around the same.
05. Lots of Gossips:
By nature, women love to gossip. When a bunch of women comes to live together, it is evident that there is the right amount of chatting and gossiping that goes on.
These late-night chats often go on over an emotional or romantic movie (watched in someone’s laptop). Sometimes they also happen over self-care sessions with girls applying face masks, packs, or doing some home-based pedicure or manicure sessions in groups.
06. Serious Academic Sessions:
Although this happens just before the exams, when it does, the magnitude is pretty severe. Girls will gather in a room or some familiar spot and engage in group study sessions.
Usually, notes from these sessions are highly valued and somehow find their way to the boys’ Hostel, study desks of day scholars, and more.
07. Lots of Sleep:
One of the notable attractions of hostel life for most girls is the fact that they can sleep wherever and whenever they want. This desire for extra rest is particularly real in the case of weekends and holidays.
Unlike boys, who are more into gymming and swimming, girls like to take it to chill and relax their way through the weekends. Very often, when they live at home, they are expected to adhere to specific regulations and cannot do as their heart desires.
08. Effective Adjustment Skills:
In the patriarchal Indian setup, girls are supposed to leave their ancestral homes and adjust with their in-laws.
Hostel life gives women the first opportunity to live away from their family and pick up on adjustment skills when they append their rooms with people whom they haven’t met before. These life skills come in handy later in their lives.
09. Sports and Other Extracurricular Activities:
Due to an increase in academic pressure, most girls tend to give sports, dance, music, and other extracurricular activities a back seat as they progress through their teenage years.
Hostel life gives them a chance to revive all that by bringing them in contact with other like-minded girls.
Several hostels also have sports arenas and indoor games room where girls practice the sport of their choice in their free time.
10. Celebrating Festivals Together:
As hostelers, it is not always feasible to go home for the festive seasons. As a result, girls end up celebrating all significant festivals (from Holi and Diwali to Eid and Christmas) together.
During such times, they decorate their hostel rooms as best as they can, dress up well, and arrange for good food. In short, the hostelers succeed in creating an environment of a home-away-from-home.
11. Being Afraid of Ghosts and Spirits:
Most girls hostels across the countries have stories of ghosts and spirits surrounding them.
Often these stories are passed on from one batch to the other in the form of late-night talks. Girls end up being very scared of these rumors and end up avoiding certain areas of the hostel campus itself.
12. Dealing with Fears:
Most girls are scared of things like cockroaches and lizards. Hostel life gives them no choice but to deal with these on their own.
As a result, girls come together and form some comradeship, which often sustains a lifetime.
13. Gorging on Homemade Food:
There is a rule in every girls’ Hostel that when one returns from home, she or he will bring homemade condiments.
These are meant to be shared with roommates and hostel friends mates making it one of the most looked forward events of hostel life. This act of generosity further strengthens the bond that hostelers have amongst themselves
14. Wearing Whatever they Want:
In most homes, there is a certain etiquette that people have to maintain concerning the clothes that they wear.