I decided to post a little blog about my experience living in Fife Park Apartments, or basically David Russel Apartments. It's basically the same complexes, looks the same.
If you are North American and you like to party then these building are right for you.
If you like to study, especially in your bedroom then these builings are not right for you.
The Cons:
- Every door in the building is a fire door. Which means they slam shut. So all day all you hear are doors slamming.
- The walls are paper thin and the beds are steal frame. Meaning: if you have a fatty that lives above you, you will hear them move in their bed all the time. It echos and creaks throughout your flat down stairs. This is equally horrible if you have a nympho that lives above, below or beside you. Literally you have to get used to listening to music loudly in your room at night to drown out the sounds.
- In the kitchen you can hear plainly the conversations of people in the kitchen above you.
- You share a flat with five people and the fridge is so small you struggle to all have all your stuff in the fridge. Someone always caves and ends up living off shitty take out.
- Fire Alarm drills are every semester at 6am in the fucking morning
- Fire Alarms in some buildings are so sensitive that they are set off by the shower steam in your room. Everyone in the building has to go outside and wait for firetrucks. This is very common for the house across from me called Nansen.
- The showers clog every 2 months depending on how long you're hair is. You have to either call maintenance or unclog it yourself or else the bathroom floods. The shower is also basically the entire bathroom, with a CM dip/ seperation from the rest of the bathroom. The dip and curtain does nothing. You're bound to get the entire bathroom soaking wet and it will spill out onto the floor of your bedroom. Probs causing mold for future generations.
- There isnt really any storage space for five people in the kitchen so the kitchen is a shit hole all the time.
- The heating is only on from like 8am to 2pm 4pm to 11pm. So basically all night it is freezing. I really hated this. Because it's so noisy during the day in the buildings I'm usually not here. So the heaters work when most people are at the library or in class. Invest in good blankets.
- TVs in the house need an expensive licence, so the flat screen is basically useless unless you fork over the licence fee. I think it's like 100£ so almost $200.
- Buildings are really far away from most humanities classes and the library. So taking lots of books out of the library sucks
- Stoves are induction so do not bring pots and pans for regular stoves, they will not work here.
- The garbage bins in flats are very small so you will be taking the garbage out all the time. Unless you are an ass room mate that doesnt help.
- At night time there are huge street lights on outside your window constantly. The blinds don't block it out so hang something over them. It really sucks for me because I've lived on a farm all my life. I'm used to waking up to natural sunlight and going to sleep with the blinds open and you can see stars and its dark. But here the streets lights make it seem like day light.
- Far away from the bus stop so either take a cap or walk the 15 minutes with your luggage... or wait for the random bus that comes to the reception hall every hour or something. If you do that don't stand at the designated bus stop on the road. Stand at the reception door and the bus goes there??! Fucked up I know, there's no signs tell you the bus stop is really in a parking lot and not at the bus stop. It will literally drive past you otherwise.
- Invest in a bike. But be very cautious because drivers don't understand bike hand signals or that bikes exist. They are a bit backwards in the UK. People get hit every day on their bikes in St Andrews.
The PROS
- The buildings are relatively new so there isnt really any mold yet. For older buildings in town they are infested with mold. People in the UK seem to think that if you paint over mold or spray it with cleaner/ scrape it off it will go away. But no, you need to remove the entire boards and replace the infected area in my opinion. Mold is a major problem in most older buildings in the UK and people just seem to accept it. SO SICK and gross.
- Here hyrdo and the pathetic heat are included in the bill. You can wash all your clothes in your shower for hours if you want to and the hot water will still work. You can heat up your room really quickly by just running your shower for a few hours. Luckily my fire alarm isnt sensitive in my building from steam so I can avoid the stupid heating times and setting off the fire alarm.
- You know the people you're renting from are legit. You get free maintenance on call when ever you need it.
- The buildings are really close to the school gym so you have no excuse to not get out and exercise.
- The walk to class is pretty you can see the ocean and the the farmers field is pretty.
- The walk to morrisons though long is peaceful through lady braes.
