If you haven’t started already, it’s about time to find yourself a place to live next year. With nearly nine months of being a tenant under my belt, I thought I might offer my expertise to the rest of you.

The first question you need to ask is whether you want to live in the dorms or in some sort of rental house or apartment. The dorms are an ideal fit for freshman and sophomores who just don’t know any better, as well as juniors and seniors who still enjoy sharing a bathroom with 50 other people and living in a room that has all the comforts of a utility closet.

For the rest of you, you’ll probably want to start searching for an apartment or house sometime soon. For the most part, apartments and houses are fairly similar. Renting a house may require slightly more effort and responsibility on your part, but I think it’s worth it because the odds of being awakened at 4 a.m. by some drunken bastards who pulled the fire alarm are greatly reduced.

Once you have decided on the type of place you want to live in, you’ll want to search the classifieds for a place that looks like it will fit your needs. When you find one, call the landlord and set up a visit.

Landlords are a tough-skinned breed of people who are easily identified by the fact that they are constantly checking their pagers. It is unclear why they do this; as a tenant you will learn that landlords never actually respond to these pages, no matter how urgent.

Upon meeting the landlord, he will inform you that the place you were interested in was just rented to a nice elderly couple, but he has other similar places that he’s sure you’ll like even better. He will then take you to a completely new place, on the opposite side of town, which can most politely be described as a “hell-hole.”

As you tour the establishment, you will question the previous tenant’s decision to give his motorcycle an oil change in the living room and you will ponder how exactly they managed to leave a puke stain on the ceiling.

Yet by the end of the tour you will be begging the landlord to let you live there. While you may not be consciously aware of it, deep in the back of your mind you possess a deep rooted fear that the place you are looking at is the absolute last available apartment in the city. There are hundreds of other people who want this apartment too, so you better act now or you’ll be stuck living on the street where you’ll stay for the rest of your life, forced into a life-long career of

rummaging through garbage for empty pop cans!!

Or, maybe that’s just me. Even so, the landlord will probably still be able to sway you into renting his dump when he tells you about all of the improvements he is going to make during the summer. Some painting here, some carpet there and the place will look good as new. The landlord is, of course, lying.

Once you have moved in, your landlord will effectively disappear. You’ll find it nearly impossible to get him to come out and make a simple plumbing repair, let alone install that hot tub he promised you during the tour.

So if you can resist the urge to sign off on the first apartment you see, there are a couple special features I recommend holding out for.

First, try to get at least two bathrooms. It is almost a guarantee that at least one toilet will be out of order at all times. It is just nice to have a backup, so you don’t have to relive yourself in your neighbors’ garden.

If possible, try to get a place with a dishwasher. Our house either does not have this feature, or maybe it is broken, because when I’m finished eating and place my dirty dishes on the counter, they just sit there indefinitely.

When I lived at home with my parents and set my dishes on the kitchen counter, eventually they would clean themselves and magically appear back in the cupboard. (At least that’s how I think it worked.)

But, here at school the dishes will sit on the counter for weeks at a time, refusing to clean themselves. Not only that, but it seems that when I’m not watching it, the pile actually gets bigger. I don’t know if the dishes are secretly humping (there are rumors about the dish running away with the spoon), but our pile of dirty dishes is expanding at such an alarming rate that we’ve been forced to rent counter space from our neighbors until we can get the situation under control.

Once you’ve settled on a place, you’ll have to sign a lease. This is complex piece of legal writing whereby you hand over your rights and possibly those of your future children, to your landlord in exchange for housing. It may look something like this:

“Tenant agrees to pay (fill in ridiculous amount of money that you probably can’t afford here) to the landlord on the first of each month as rent. Late fees will be paid with the blood of the tenant’s immediate family.

Tenant also agrees to the following 26 pages of provisions, violation of which will result in a $50 fine. Punishable behavior includes, but is not limited to: excessive noise, excessive drinking, excessive flatulence, hanging toilet paper in the incorrect overhand fashion, crying, leaving school after your junior year to go pro, failing to use a #2 pencil, providing service to people not wearing a shirt or shoes…”

And you’ll be happy to sign it, because it sure beats living on the street collecting cans.

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Peter Borchers is a senior in advertising from Bloomington, Minn.