Showers at Penn State: Abominable or Convenient?

For all of us living in East Halls at Penn State, we know the bathrooms all too well. We come from homes with tile floors, long countertops, and clean toilets in our bathrooms. When we think of the showers here, we are reminded how abominable they are, only because we are comparing them to our showers at home. However, when we consider them in the category of college showers, rather than any shower at all, we may have a newfound respect for them.

Back at home, how many times have I come close to falling and breaking my neck? At school, these showers are not slippery in the slightest. Granted, I wear flip-flops every time I use them, but I have yet to even slide on the floor. At home, the porcelain bathtub is not very forgiving when I’m not careful where I’m moving, but here, the rough floor guarantees that I’m not falling down anywhere.

I’ve heard complaints of water pressure, but I have never had a problem with it. All we need is to be able to rinse out our hair in a convenient amount of time, and the pressure here allows me to do it. Before I came here, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to get much more pressure than a slow drip, so I’m pretty content with where it is now. I actually can't even tell a difference between home and school.

Even though I rarely use “scalding hot” water, I like having a wide range of options when it comes to the water temperature. When I arrived here, it was frustrating that I could not turn the knob all the way to the left, reach an intense heat, and then adjust to a cooler temperature. It took me a while to realize that I didn’t need an extremely hot shower in order to be comfortable, and I allowed myself to get used to it. I have heard so many horror stories of students taking freezing showers in the dead winter, and I consider us very lucky.

Ahhh, the most important part: cleanliness. I was used to sharing a bathroom with my sisters; two people that I have been living with my whole life. I knew that I was now going to have to share a bathroom with twenty-something other girls, but it never really hit me until I actually saw the bathroom. These buildings aren’t brand new, and they’ve been used by thousands of people-how clean were we really expecting them to be? There’s waterproof spackle on the walls, filling up holes which were there for some unknown reason. The floor is discolored and disgusting, but that’s understandable. We wear flip-flops and we don't need to touch any part of the shower except for the knob and the door. We're fine.

The showers make a persistent sound while they are in use. In the beginning, I was annoyed that a high-pitched squeaking would be present the whole time the faucet was turned, but I have since gotten used to it. Although it is a pest, it does help wake me up when I wasn’t that keen on getting out of bed in the morning.

The showers here obviously aren’t fantastic, and they need some work. However, we don’t need extremely hot temperatures and a completely sanitary shower. We just need to be able to get in and out in a practical amount of time. If anything, these showers motivate us to get out quickly. It’s college, and while we can complain, we should probably look at the facts and recognize that these showers are not nearly as bad as we make them out to be.