WHEN a student chooses to study overseas, one of the most important questions that come to mind is often: “Where do I stay?” There are, of course, a few options. Do I want to live on campus or off? Would I prefer to live with a Malaysian, or someone from a different country?

These questions bugged me for a while as I planned my transfer over to Lincoln, Nebraska. After all, I have never lived away from my family in 21 years, and we have never lived outside of Kuala Lumpur.

Another worry I had was if I could get along with my new roomate. So, in the end I chose to live on campus with a Malaysian (yes, I played safe). I opted to live in a three-floor traditional residential hall in the centre of the campus.

Alexis See Tho (left) and her residential hall's resident assistant Yume Akiyama.

The University of Nebraska Lincoln campus isn’t very big in comparison to many other universities in the United States; so living right in the heart of the campus means that I am only 15 minutes or less away from my classes.

The shocker for me was the common bathroom. One can easily see a fellow friend living on the same floor running around (some shyly) wrapped in a towel and hands trying hard to grip on to shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and clothes. Here’s a tip: Get a toiletry basket.

There are 40 to 60 students living on every floor and only two bathrooms with three cubicles each. My room is directly opposite the bathroom, but the bad news is that I hear floor mates singing in the shower everyday. It still feels odd to have a floor mate watch me brush teeth in the morning. After all, not everyone looks fabulous in the morning!

Living in the dorm also means eating in the communal dining hall. There are many systems used by universities in US. Some employ a compulsory choice of five-day or seven-day unlimited access meal plan to its residents like here. Others have packages differing in the number of times a student can enter the dining hall in a semester.

I have the five-day meal plan because I’m a picky eater and weekends are always good for exploring restaurants downtown. There are four dining halls I could access to and they open as early as 6.30am and closes at 8.30pm.

Food in dining halls is served buffet style; this should not come as a surprise as the United States is home to some of the largest buffet chain restaurants. It was a delight to us newbies at first, but eating buffet style means overeating (there is truth in the concept of the Freshman Fifteen – where the typical freshman gains about 7kg).

What I can say is eating in dining halls can be as unhealthy as it can be healthy. There are always rows of fresh vegetables and fruits ... right next to the burgers, fries and pizza.

Having no experience with dorm life, I did not know what to expect. All I knew was that I could meet international students as well as Americans. Life in my dorm is so active that I have to come up with valid excuses to skip parties. We have weekly floor parties and a typical one would revolve girls getting together in our pajamas drinking tea and eating (again) cookies.

We have a Resident Assistant on every floor and ours is a Japanese girl named Yume Akiyama. Resident Assistants act as “parents” and their responsibility is the wellbeing of residents on their floors and to make sure that dorm life is not dull. We will have jewelry making night this week and my roommate and I promised to prepare Malaysian dessert.

For those who love cooking, living in a dorm does not mean you cannot cook; some dorms have well equipped industrial kitchens. Other than a kitchen, dorms usually have common areas for TV watching, study rooms, computer lab, and mine has a game room as well. Living in dorms feels to me like living in a complex with everything I need.

The goal of dorm life is to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet and to help settle down better. But I also find it a little bit restrictive.

The food served at Alexis See Tho's residential hall in Lincoln, Nebraska is arguably healthier than what you'd have in Malaysian campuses.

Living in numbered room feels like renting a hotel room for a year. One day after a football game, I told my friend “I think I’ll head back home”, then I felt the word didn’t sound right.

To have my own bathroom, cook pan mee when I feel like it, decorate my room without fear of damaging the walls would be home.

So has my choice of paying a higher rental to live on campus been rewarding? Definitely. If there is one thing I can take away from living in the dorm is that meeting strangers is not frightening; half the time the other person doesn’t speak because he or she is also terrified to say anything.

The time spent here would be missed when I move out of campus next year – or maybe not. We’ll see.