It was a Thursday night. I was sitting in my living room watching a movie with my new housemate, when I started hearing strange noises coming from the window. “What the hell is that ?” I asked with fear in my voice. “Oh, that sound?” my housemate asked. “That’s just coyotes. ”

Where in Isla Vista can you hear coyotes outside your window ? Nowhere actually – for that, you need to move to Goleta. Yes, I am one of those students who made the exodus to Goleta in search of cheaper rent, a parking space, and peace and quiet. And I found the promised land in the form of my own room for $575, a pool, a dishwasher and all the off-street parking I want. That’s right, the streets are now my playground for parallel parking.

However, my three-bedroom, two-bath condo did not come without some sacrifices, one of these being the possibility that my drunken late nights in I.V. were going to have to come to an end. I’ve discovered this doesn’t mean my partying has to stop altogether, but the days of walking home drunk at four o’clock in the morning are now over – unless I want to walk three miles in the middle of the night. So basically, I spend my weekends sleeping on my generous friends’ couches or futons. Even though this is fine for a while, there is no feeling like sleeping in your own bed after a long night of drunken debauchery.

School is a lot farther now as well. While I used to have the choice of walking, biking, taking the bus or driving to campus, now my options are limited to just driving or taking the bus. Driving is now the main activity of my day, which can leave quite a dent in my pocket considering the price of gas nowadays, not to mention how much a parking permit costs for the whole year. A ‘C’ parking permit, which is the permit students who live outside a two-mile radius from school are eligible for, costs about $400 for the whole school year. The upside to having the permit, however, is that I never have to roam the streets of I.V. looking for parking or pay at one of the on-campus parking machines. This comes in handy when I running late; I can just park and run straight to class.

Although there are some cons to living outside of I.V., there are a significant number of pros. One significant pro is that my landlord isn’t a greedy son of a bitch who is out to take advantage of students and charge ridiculous amounts for falling-down apartments. As opposed to having tons of property, we are our landlord’s only tenants. We have her direct number if there is ever a problem or an emergency with the apartment. For example, when we moved in, our carpets had a couple of stains on it that the cleaners neglected. We mentioned these visual disturbances to our landlord and she came over the next day, armed with cleaning solution and carpet dye to take care of the problem.

As I mentioned earlier, off-street parking is plentiful, which definitely beats the nights I spent circling I.V. for hours looking for a space to park my car. And then there’s my room, which is probably the biggest benefit to living outside of I.V. It alone is almost worth all the sacrifices. I love looking out my window and seeing the sun coming up from the rolling foothills in the morning rather than my neighbors having sex. Although I was lucky enough to have two good roommates over the last couple of years, there is nothing like coming home to your own space for only $575.

Although, for the most part, I did enjoy living in I.V., the change of scenery isn’t a bad one. When people ask me what the biggest difference is between living in Goleta and I.V., I just say that instead of hearing wild partying, I hear wildlife. I traded the sound of drunken debauchery for crickets, and I don’t regret it for a second.

Daily Nexus layout editor Stefanie Bautista just loves the sound of creepy crawlies in the morning.