Author’s Note: “Student Living” is something of a love letter to the makeshift nature of living on a budget as a student. It’s bleary-eyed mornings and caffeine fueled nights with our faces slammed against readings and lecture notes. I wanted to write something that encompassed my love of that experience while also reflecting all the ways it felt, y’know, just a little off.
—AD
CW: None.
There’s just something about student1 apartments. Like, we all end up living in a basement2 at least once with all our shitty, overpriced textbooks3 piled into makeshift TV stands and our new, expensive4 school-related tech ends up thrown about the second-hand furniture5. Then there’s the staple plain IKEA table6; the tiny, cramped kitchen7; the barely stocked pantry8; the neighbours9 you never meet; and the tiny glimpse of natural light10 if you’re lucky enough to have any at all11.
1. Student n.
stu·dent | \ ˈstü-dᵊnt
1. Someone who is in school, for reasons of familial, societal, or arcane obligation.
2. Another word for young, alone, and terrified.
3. Financially deprived.
2. Basement n.
base·ment | \ ˈbās-mənt
1. A room underground, with the weight of a building or more bearing down upon its precarious ceiling.
2. The place where the shadows are overly familiar.
3. Home, though. Despite the things that lurk in the dark.
3. Textbook n.
text·book | \ ˈteks(t)-ˌbu̇k
1. A book used in the study of a subject, pushed by the institution and costing almost as much as your rent.
2. A bound work of arcane knowledge and dead languages you were really supposed to have already been fluent in.
3. That wailing, crumbling thing we pulled out of the wall because it was blocking access to the fuse panel.
4. Expensive adj.
ex·pen·sive | \ ik-ˈspen(t)-siv
1. Definitely more than rent.
2. Because the reagents for that class cost a whole paycheck on top of tuition.
5. Furniture n.
fur·ni·ture | \ ˈfər-ni-chər
1. Objects meant for leisurely use such as resting, nursing hangovers, sleeping, or contemplating mistakes.
2. Thrifted, misshapen, worn-down, and old, but you love it anyway.
6. Table n.
ta·ble | \ ˈtā-bəl
1. The meeting place of the apartment, where food is had and complaints are aired.
2. The thing you brought back from the yard sale by campus.
3. The location where you told me we need to leave because our apartment was no longer safe.
7. Kitchen n.
kitch·en | \ ˈki-chən
1. The dedicated room for food preparation.
2. The room with all the knives, fire, and eyes.
8. Pantry n.
pan·try | \ ˈpan-trē
1. A room or closet wherein to store shelf-stable or non-perishable foods, nearly empty cleaning supplies, and various jarred animal parts.
2. The place where you hid during your last finals breakdown.
9. Neighbour n.
neigh·bor | \ ˈnā-bər
1. Those half-shadows that flit around the building.
2. Those eyes that peer in through the cracks.
3. Those people.
10. Light n.
lit\ ˈlit
1. That thing that revealed the halls we didn’t know we had.
2. The physical brightness of the sun (the fires in the kitchen don’t count nor do the artificial bulbs in the ceiling; too dead and too tempting).
3. The feeling of elation after an escape, where reassurances are exchanged but the questions remain unspoken.
Light v.
1. To take fire or to ignite something.
2. What we did to the building and everyone—everything inside.
11. All adv. n. pron.
ˈȯl
1. The world and nothing; whole, empty, but alive.
