Example Essay

Beginning college is a new adventure for everyone.  It can lead to meeting new people, exploring new ideas, and even some pretty interesting new places.  My lifelong friend John and I moved down here from Aroostook County to try out the college experience about two or three years ago.  Since then we’ve been roommates through just about all of it, living in some pretty unique places.  We went from splitting a tiny efficiency apartment for about 6 months, all the way up to living in a huge 4 bedroom house for a year or so, and a few random spots in between. 

When John first moved in with me, I was living in a tiny little efficiency apartment over in Veazie.  The location was good, about half way between UMO and the Bangor Mall.  The commute from there wasn’t bad for me at all, unless you considered the amount of time it takes to drive through Orono when it’s busy.  The only complaint I had was the size.  The building I was living in had been remodeled from a hotel actually a few years back, and from the first time I saw it I, and anyone else I asked, could definitely tell that I was living in a redesigned hotel room.  Things were cramped there for quite a while, with me and all of my tools and projects that I was working on at the time.  Then I had to find a way to squeeze John in.  But we found a way to make it work and we did it for quite a while.  Although I do remember having to sleep on the couch a lot, for roughly the last two or three month’s straight living there.  Isn’t college great? 

From there we upgraded.  We had been stuck in a tiny little place for so long we declare the sky was the limit and started our search. We wanted a place that we could really spread our wings in.  We mulled over craigslist and newspapers for weeks on end, and finally found it.  It was a huge 4 bedroom house in the downtown area, right around Hollywood Slots.  There we had all the space we could ever want and it was still just the two of us.  The best way I can describe it would be to say it was just about a frat house.  It had huge open spaces, way too much testosterone, and frequent needs to repair damage that we had done.  Nothing could be better right?  Wrong.  Just as we were getting familiar with the place, winter started sneaking up on us.  (Winter isn’t very sneaky I know.)  The temperatures dropped, and heating oil was on the rise.  We realized about 5 months too late that even though the rent was relatively low on the house, it was going to take a fortune to heat the dang thing over the winter, especially just between the two of us.  We were left scrambling just a month before snowfall to find a new place.  Somewhere where we could actually afford to stay the winter and that meant sacrificing some of that glorious space.     

And here we are; our current residence.  This one seems to be the best choice we’ve made so far, leading me to believe we may have actually learned from our mistakes.  Who would have thought?  The new place a pretty good mix of all of the things we should have been looking for from the get go.  It’s a two bedroom house, with a sun room added on a few years back, giving us adequate space for two people.  It’s about half of the size of the large house, and almost four times the size of the efficiency.  It’s a much newer house that the large one we previously rented, with lots of upgrades added to increase its energy efficiency.  New windows and plenty of insulation means we don’t need to worry about heating nearly as must as we used to.  The electrical system could use a bit of updating from the 80’s, but other than that I don’t have any complaints, but I do still have my fingers crossed that my Xbox and TV don’t short circuit anything.

I moved down here thinking I knew it all, classic teenage invincibility complex.  But through a bit of trial and error we found ourselves a place to live that’s just about perfect for us.  If I had to go back and do it all again, I probably wouldn’t change much, other than to leave most of my things that I didn’t need right away in a storage locker.  Because over the last few years I think the biggest lesson that I learned, the lesson that I want to try and pass off to everyone I meet, is that moving is a PAIN-IN-THE-ASS.  And if you have to do it, make sure you get it right the first time, or else you’ll be stuck living out of cardboard boxes for months on end like me.