<p>^^Best post of the thread.</p>
<p>Thank you, nrdsb4! </p>
<p>Yes Americans are getting soft with all of their 1st world problems. I think I will just scream if another person tells me that their system cannot tolerate gluten and they need to be gluten free!!! They didn’t know they had this problem until all the advertisers screamed it from the rooftops!!</p>
<p>I just dropped my daughter off at her very old, very un-modern dorm. She took a ton of stuff, and was very pleased with herself that everything fit. I know she won’t wear half the clothes, nor wear most of the shoes, but she wanted to take it all. There must be 10-14 girls sharing a two stall, one sink, two shower bathroom (they have a sink in their rooms), which will be very very busy. The dorms/bathrooms/roommate situation played no part in her picking this school. I told her to make sure her roommate was okay with the smelly reed defuser thing, the fan, the endless electronics as not everyone is. My daughter is a little better prepared for dorm life than many kids as she always shared a bathroom with her sister, and until middle school also shared a bedroom. She’s also very easy going so if anyone requests she get rid of the smelly things or turn off a light, she will.</p>
<p>She can easily be bribed with food too, so her roommate can just offer her a granola bar to turn off the light.</p>
<p>I fully admit I’m soft. A huge storm blew through tonight and our power was out for several hours. It’s in the 90s here and I just couldn’t handle it without a fan. I went and hung out at work just to get some AC and charge my phone. </p>
<p>With that said, I think we’ve solidly crossed over from phobia into silliness. There’s a huge difference between a legitimate phobia and being inconvenienced by the light of an alarm clock. But either way, if you truly can’t STAND something that minor, get a single. Don’t inconvenience your roommate. </p>
<p>@riverbirch Celiac’s disease has been around a long time (like, pretty much since the dawn of civilization). It’s nothing new. Yes, many people claim it that don’t have it but we’re also getting better at diagnosing it. Before, people just lived with the constant pain without knowing how to treat it or what it was. That’s for another thread though… </p>
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<p>In light of the above commentary, this song is highly appropriate:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDcbO2bRxhg”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDcbO2bRxhg</a></p>
<p>:D 
:D</p>
<p>
Thanks for explaining. I figured it was something like that. If they needed this level of information on their daughter, they should have made their financing her education dependent upon HER calling them every day to provide all details of her schedule and food intake. </p>
<p>I think it’s worth noting that a kid may not be aware of a phobia before college, or it may develop later in life. I didn’t realize that I had (relatively mild) claustrophobia until I moved to New York City and discovered that sometimes I just HAD to get off a crowded bus or subway train. Honestly, I had never in my life been in situations that were that constricting. It’s not something you can just get over. I have to be sedated in order to get into an MRI tube–otherwise I just can’t keep still. It can make situations very unpleasant, even if they can be tolerated (i.e., the middle seat on an airplane). But I didn’t experience this at all in college.</p>
<p>I can easily imagine a kid who always slept with the windows open, or who never slept on a top bunk, etc., finding out for the first time in college that these things were very difficult. Probably in most cases, the issue is something a young person can adapt to–but perhaps not always.</p>
<p>^I have positional claustrophobia. When I had to have an MRI, I kept telling myself “just don’t open your eyes until it’s over”. I told H the same thing but he opened his eyes, kind of freaked out, and had to remind himself to keep his eyes shut.</p>
<p>I’m another person who has developed some degree of claustrophobia. I got a sedative to have an MRI, but it didn’t seem to do that much good. (Possibly because I had been taking hydrocodone for the condition that prompted it for many weeks.) What did help a lot was having a washcloth folded over my eyes, at the suggestion of the tech. That meant I could open my eyes and see the cloth, rather than the top of the tube right over me. <shudder> Lamaze breathing helped, too. 
Highly recommend the cloth for fellow-sufferers.</shudder></p>
<p>I think they gave me Ativan. Worked nicely.</p>
<p>But this is a good example of how it’s hard to explain a phobia to somebody who hasn’t experienced it. I needed that MRI. But without the Ativan, I absolutely would have not gotten the MRI and would have taken my chances with whatever was wrong with me. No logic would have changed that.</p>
<p>That’s good. Same thing here. Didn’t seem to make a dent in my anxiety. :)</p>
<p>I’d actually have found the MRI relaxing if it weren’t so noisy. I swear it was the Beach Boys singing “Ba-ba-ba, Babara-Ann” slightly off key at the top of their lungs. OTOH, I hate the bottom bunk, I’m always terrified the top bunk will fall in on me. If I remember correctly Harvard bunk beds were one solid piece of metal, and extra high.</p>
<p>I never had any problem with bottom bunks, but once when my son was a Cub Scout we had an outing where we slept overnight on a decommissioned Coast Guard (I think) ship, and the bunks were so close together I could not sleep a wink. Ended up sitting up all night.</p>