For many Tufts students, preparations for last weekend's storm meant nothing more than buying some extra food from Hodgdon and making sure the DVD collection was well-stocked.
For those students who live off-campus rather than in a dorm, however, the impending storm came with many more headaches, including snow-shoveling, car-maneuvering, and exorbitant heating bills.
"Living off-campus is annoying in the winter," said senior Roxie Kritzer, who said that parking on snow banks has been the greatest winter thorn in her side.
Kritzer, who lives off Powderhouse Square with another roommate, finds the self-sufficiency required to live off-campus bothersome once winter comes. "It's frustrating, because when you are in the dorms, you're complaining because it's so hot all winter," she said. "But then when you're living off campus you're complaining because it's freezing since you don't want to pay for extra heating."
Sometimes, however, those in the dorms share similar problems with the winter weather. "Actually, this time, because school was canceled, they didn't shovel until the evening," said junior Andrew Chapman, who is living in Hillsides. Since he and his roommates were counting on University Facilities to take care of the snow, they had not prepared for the storm.
"Basically, we did it on our own, and we didn't have shovels," he said. "So pretty much, we took a chair and pushed snow with it."
In addition, many students claim that the heating in the dorms is not up to par. "When you're living on campus, you have to worry about 2,000 other people complaining that they don't have heat or that it's cold," said junior Mara Eve Stahl, an R.A. in Houston Hall.
Chapman concurred. "They do have heating problems [in the dorms]," he said, though he added that, as opposed to those who have off-campus housing, "I guess we have the advantage of having Facilities come in."
Off-campus students do not have that same luxury. After spending an hour and a half trying to get a parking spot at the supermarket and then playing cart-chicken with other shoppers, off-campus dwellers returned to their homes before the big storm to sit back and await their isolation -- and shoveling.
"We have four cars in a small driveway, so shoveling and moving them around is a hassle," said junior Liza Blumenthal, who lives on Tesla St. with four friends. In addition, Blumenthal said that "with all the snow the house gets really messy, because people track snow and dirt on their wet shoes."
Most students' landlords are required in their contracts to shovel the walks in front of the houses they rent to students. According to some off-campus-dwelling students, though, landlords needed prompting to do their duty after the storm.
"Our landlord shovels," Kritzer said. "We had to call him to remind him that it was in our contract, but after the blizzard he was there digging us a little trench."
Liza Martindale (LA '03), who lived on College Ave. for two years, recalled a snow storm during her senior year that resulted in a snow day and the sacrifice of all her roommates' cars for several days. They only got their cars back once they called some of their male friends to come shovel for them: "We got boys to come over and help us," she said.
Garbage collection is another concern that students in the dorms tend to take for granted. On-campus students need not live with seven garbage bags in their rooms, but that is not always true for snow-wary off-campus residents.
"Actually, we have garbage piled up in the back of our kitchen because nobody wants to shovel the back porch to get to the cans outside," Blumenthal said. "People make fun of our back steps leading outside, because there are a ton of garbage bags. Taking them out in three feet of snow is a pain."
Though there are many complications to living off-campus in the winter, Martindale found them valuable. "By the time I was a senior, we were older and didn't want to deal with sharing a room with someone," she said. "So I feel like being responsible about a house was fun and a good transition step to 'the real world.'"
Be sure to see Friday's "Campus Comment," which asks Tufts students how they prepared for the snowfall Boston has received so far this year.
