Friends, Romans, dorm-dwellers — lend me your ears.

In the following weeks, many of you will be making the important decision of whether to live on campus again next year. I went through the same process at this time last winter.

After two years of cursing shower shoes, consuming only microwavable food and complaining about the matchbox Penn State expected us to call home, my best friend and I decided we needed a change. After all, you know you're not happy somewhere when you constantly refer to it only as "the ghetto" or "a hellhole."

We finally found our future apartment while visiting some friends. All summer long, we discussed how great it would be to live off campus. We even invested in a set of Wal-Mart's finest bathroom accessories to celebrate our newfound independence.

My friend and I reveled in our first few weeks at our Beaver Canyon apartment. We paid homage to our kitchen appliances. We cooked full-course meals. We actually cleaned.

As the year progressed, however, we learned some quirks of apartment living. I am here to dish out the small — yet important — things you need to know before you move into your apartment or house next year.

Not everything belongs in the garbage disposal.

We learned this lesson the hard way. If you make a point of washing your dishes about once every three days, as we do, it's easy to lose silverware. One of the worst sounds ever is the strained whirring of the disposal as it grinds a metal spoon. What's even worse is using the spoon in a bowl of Lucky Charms the next morning and slicing up your tongue. Our friends are still laughing at us.

Never purchase flimsy plastic porch chairs.

When the wind reaches a gusty 10 miles per hour, those suckers will flip over and blow back and forth across your porch or balcony and annoy the hell out of you. It's cheaper to just go to the study lounge and snatch some of the metal chairs like we did.

Once a plant turns assorted shades of yellow and brown, it's probably dead.

Feeling confident in my domestic abilities, I purchased two small plants to adorn our bachelorette pad. We carefully watered the plants a few times. Then we refreshed them only after someone left their glass of water on the coffee table. The watering process soon ceased altogether. One day, upon close inspection, my roommate decided the wilted weeds would benefit from a healthy dose of the sun and placed them on the balcony, not realizing the hot rays would further parch the plants. Needless to say, the aforementioned wind took care of them before the sun did.

Know your neighbors — and be nice to them.

This was a rather expensive lesson taught to me by our town's friendly magistrate. Apparently, someone who lives near me thought it would be a better idea to have the State College Police Department tell me to turn down my stereo (which wasn't very loud to begin with) before they took the effort to walk across the hall to do it themselves. Disorderly conduct citations to the tune of $150 can really ruin your day. In the interest of peaceful coexistence, ask your neighbors to cut the volume on their Shaggy CD before you summon law enforcement.

If you share a bedroom with someone, make sure they don't own an alarm clock with a snooze button.

There's nothing more disturbing than being awakened from your restful slumber every nine minutes by a radio blaring the "music" of Britney Spears, BB Mak and Christina Aguilera. After several times, the incessant racket may cause you to toss a throw pillow in the direction of the clock or even your roommate's head. After prolonged exposure, however, the visions of sugarplums dancing in your head may be replaced by images of you tightly coiling the clock's cord around the offender's neck.

Sleeping in the bottom bunk is only a good thing if you like living in a box.

My roommates got the brilliant idea that I should occupy the bottom bed because I wasn't exactly blessed with the gift of height. Not wanting to disturb our happy home environment, I reluctantly agreed without knowing what I would be getting in to. Now, almost every morning, I smack my noggin when I clumsily stumble out of bed or when I bolt out of a deep sleep to the buzzing of an alarm clock (sometimes every nine minutes).

Just say no to modem connections.

One of the dumbest decisions we made upon moving into our apartment was purchasing a second phone line to connect to the Internet. Our service is slow and unreliable. We equate the dialing sounds of computer modems to someone dragging his nails across a chalkboard. The three of us drool whenever we hear the words "Ethernet" or "cable modem."

Don't live in Beaver Canyon if you plan on passing your classes on the first try.

The scene of the infamous State College riots can get a little rowdy on the weekends and the weekdays. For example, one side of Beaver Avenue turned into Romper Room during a power outage last week. As I walked home, people illuminated the dark street with flashlights, strewed toilet paper along the street and yelled in unison about once every 30 seconds. The same things happen every weekend. On the rare weekend evening that I stay in to tend to my academic duties, I can always count on a fight in the hallway, drunken people trying to gain entrance into my apartment and inebriated partygoers seeing how many vulgarities they can use in one sentence. C'est la vie, I suppose.

I hope these tips have shown you the quirkiness apartment or house living can offer. Choose your future home knowing that when you return to Happy Valley in the fall, flip-flops and Ramen noodles will not be part of your back-to-school supplies.

Good luck and happy home hunting!