How to Survive: Your roommates

Almost every college student has a roommate at some point in their college career. Out of all of those pairings, there are obviously some that will not work, period, some where the problems can be resolved and then there are some that will most likely become your life-long friends. Of course, you have to live with them first.

When I got my rooming assignment freshman year, I was really excited and really scared. I had never lived with anyone else in such close proximity before.

I e-mailed my roomie and she seemed nice enough, although we had dissimilar interests. When we got to school, we didn’t really talk much after the first night. We held vastly different schedules. Not that I
went to bed early, but she came home extremely late. Which would have been fine with me, if she hadn’t been so noisy.

Over the course of a few months, she’d come home at 3 a.m., wake up at 6 a.m., and regularly wake me up in the process as she’d generally make more noise than
necessary. She’d leave her cellphone on at night and it would beep all throughout with the arrival of text messages. I barely got any sleep.

To top things off, she brought alcohol into our room. That’s when I knew I needed a new roommate.

After a while, she finally moved out and a friend who was also having roommate problems came to live with me. The year went on without any more roommate troubles.

What can be learned from my experience is something that most with roommate problems don’t realize. You can improve your situation. For some reason, many people think that its just easier to grin and bear it. What I want to know is, for how long?

I know so many people who dislike their roommates, but decide to just live with it for the sake of acceptance (whose?) or because they think the process is too hard.

In reality, the hardest part is finding another place for you or your unwanted roomie. After that, it’s a bit of talking to your CSD and the housing department, a little bit of paperwork and a day spent packing, moving and putting your new place together.

If you truly can’t stand living with your roommate, it’s only really too late to change when it’s three weeks away from the end of spring quarter.

Of course, there are some situations where there are only a few problems going on with you and your roommate. You can still live with them, you even get along, but they just keep throwing their stuff on your
side of the room, or they always keep the heat on. In my case, they never wash their dishes.

This year, I’m living in Cerro Vista, which to my delight comes with a full kitchen. Not so much to my delight, the same roommate that moved in with me last year never does her dishes.

No, there isn’t a huge pile of dirty dishes sitting in our sink, but there are a few that have been there since before winter break started. Gross.

I’ve asked her politely to wash her dishes. I’ve put her dishes outside her room, (I can’t put them on her bed because she locks her door) but they’re still sitting there. I won’t wash them out of principle, even though I want to get them out of the sink. I’m close to writing out a list of house rules that would be very strictly enforced, but I currently lack a working printer.

In the end, I’ll need to sit my roommate down and tell her that she needs to wash her dishes despite all her classes and her long hours at work. It will be awkward and hard to do without getting her pissed off
at me, but it still needs to be done. I don’t want any new life-forms in the apartment that aren’t in a 20 gallon tank.

Likewise, you might have to do the same to your roommate. For all bad roommate situations, there’s nothing better than just sitting down and talking to them about the problems that you have with them.

Ask them why they don’t wash the dishes, or whatever it is, and if there are any things that you do that annoy them. You can even write down a few mutual rules that both you and your roomie feel you can stick to.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a roommate that you can live with and hopefully be friends with for a long time to come. Eventually, you might come to realize that living with a roommate will help you prepare for living with another partner later in life. College is just one big learning experience like that.