Oh yes, student homes can be quite grim. What happens (sadly) is they rent out these awesome historic homes and don't do any maintenance and just let them go until they can't anymore, then they sell to a developer to tear down for apartments.

I kind of love living in/near a college neighborhood - I've found college kids are usually pretty nice and chill individuals.

I actually work in a research compliance office at my university. So we take in research proposals and evaluate them to make sure the research is ethical and all guidelines are being followed. I'm the main admin person in the office so I see it all. I love my job - pays peanuts, but it's great and the people I work with are awesome. I'm in grad school for university student affairs, which I took because I love working at a university and I can take classes for free since I work there. But, I'm also kind of considering taking on technical writing to see if I enjoy that. I've written lots of SOP manuals for my office and have found I'm pretty good at it, and there is apparently quite a promising field in technical writing.