Ashley DeVriend
ashleydevriend.md@gmail.com
Already halfway through the school year, it is time to start planning for next year’s living situation.
The location is the first step. There is Poly Canyon Village on campus or you can choose to live off campus. The second step is the type of housing — apartments, condominiums or a house are different options. The cost of rent and deciding how many roommates to live with is the last step in your decision process.
The search is on, not only for the perfect place, but for the perfect roommates as well. Roommates can make or break a living situation. Whether you get stuck with a stranger in the dorms or you just choose the wrong roommate, we have all heard horrifying stories. Hopefully you aren’t the one who has a story of your own to tell.
There’s the roommate who doesn’t shower, the roommate who never leaves and the classic roommate who sexiles you on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, traumatizing roommate stories aren’t difficult to find. Cal Poly students share their own roommate stories.
Psychology senior Christine Warren has a unique story of her roommate situation dating back to her freshman year.
“My freshman roommate was dating a 16-year-old from her high school around the end of fall quarter,” Warren said. “By the end of winter quarter, she was engaged. She proceeded to make her own wedding dress spring quarter and left it hanging in our room the whole time. That was fun to explain to guests.”
Environmental management and protection sophomore Zach Parea didn’t have a roommate who was making a wedding dress, but he does have a story of his own from the dorms.
“One of my roommates last year used to sleep talk,” Parea said. “Every time I would come home at night he would be asleep and just say some random assortment of words that typically didn’t make sense. He would say things like ‘did they explode?’ and ask if the dragons were still around. One night he proclaimed his love of sushi and asked me for lettuce paper.”
Business administration sophomore Marina Plemons had a different roommate situation when she was a freshman.
“I had a foreign roommate in the dorms,” Plemons said. “She didn’t speak English, didn’t do laundry once and our RA had to come talk to me about cleaning our room because he could smell her from the common room. It was terrible.”
Architecture sophomore Kendra Gartrell has a roommate story of a different nature.
“One night I was asleep when I woke up to my bunk bed shaking and my first thought was that there was an earthquake,” Gartrell said. “A few seconds later I realized this was no earthquake, this was my roommate having sex with some guy she brought home from a party. Some weeks later, my other roommate and I woke up to my drunk roommate having sex right above me again. That time I decided enough was enough and I simply got out of bed and left the room. We never talked about it, but my roommate never brought a guy back after that.”
There are awkward, funny and smelly roommate situations potentially lurking in the future. It is best to avoid these situations by planning early and choosing a roommate who will be comfortable to live with. Before it’s time to move in, it is a good idea to go over certain roommate agreements in order to be on the same page as one another. The goal is to be listening to the bad roommate stories, not telling your own.
Good luck finding roommates for next year. Choose wisely, my friends.