Roommates

I can be the best or worst roommate. I have high standards, I won’t tolerate bullying, and I mostly keep to myself while at home. These attributes have allowed for years of peaceful co-habitation with other roommates, but for some, these attributes caused nothing but strife. No roommate is truly perfect, although I found a few that got close, we all have our quirks, and we all must learn to live with each other. Below is a list of my roommates throughout my years at college.

First year – Transfer housing.

1. My first roommate after I transferred to a Poly Tech university, was J. She went to the same community college as me and when I found that out I asked if she wanted to be roommates. She said yes. We were both quiet, reserved, and had high standards. We had some conflicts: she had a early bedtime of 8pm and sometimes I’d lock myself out and have to wake her up, and sometimes she left an empty bowl on the couch that I’d almost sit on. However, when I brought it up, she stopped, and after it happened a second time, I never locked myself out again. We were very dissimilar, we had different friends, hobbies, majors, work schedules, and ambitions, but, we were aligned on our apartment being a quiet and clean place. She was my best roommate.
2. The same year there was a second relatively absent roommate, called M. M rarely stayed at our place, mostly staying with her boyfriend or friends, and would monthly make a large pot of food that would slowly spoil over the month, uneaten. M and I did not get along because during our first week one of M’s friends scoffed at me and called me some names. However, I was polite, engaged, and we never really interacted. I don’t think I even knew what her major was.

2nd year – Sober apartment

1. I stuck with J and we moved into a sober apartment on her request as we both thought we were good roommates. We didn’t have any issues.
2. We had a very quiet music major, A that year as well, and she would quietly play cello in her room and stored her butter in the cupboard in a dish. She wasn’t a great conversationalist and I enjoyed listening to the practice. She was also clean, and if you didn’t hear the music, essentially non-existent in the apartment.
3. The third roommate was B, and she shopped at Costco for everything which meant she always had stuff spilling out of the cupboard and storage area. She was clean and relatively quiet, but she would place international calls late at night and get into arguments with her parents. I felt bad for her. However, it was annoying when the conversations would go until midnight as the walls were paper thin and I couldn’t sleep with headphones in.

Fourth Year – off-campus

1. My first roommate was A, she couldn’t drive due to a previous DUI, ate the same omelet for almost every meal, and was nice. She was quiet, mostly kept to herself, was clean, and would only occasionally have large groups of friends over who were loud until 3 in the morning. I liked her but we never really crossed paths all that often.
2. My second roommate was B. She was an international student and she tended to eat other’s food without replacing it. She was also quiet, clean, and I liked her but I also didn’t tend to have food that would appeal to her readily available so I never had any issues with her.
3. My third roommate was E and we did not get along from her first text. She was a mess. She could not keep her mess contained, she left food out for weeks, and within a few hours of meeting her demanded that I give her money for shared communal items (like trash cans) and tried to take 3/4 of the fridge. She struggled with boundaries, she struggled with cleaning, and she never left her room. Also, she sang opera. She was used to getting her way and I just refused to play along.

I’ve had a wide spectrum of experiences. Some years were smooth sailing, the quirks of my roommates were small annoyances that happened irregularly, and overall didn’t leave much of an impression. However, E was a roommate who didn’t clean and had too much stuff for her space, and these attributes alone made that year particularly painful. After awhile I mostly chose to not interact with E, which wasn’t difficult, she ate mostly junk food in her room except the three or four times a quarter she cooked a meal. However, even with E, that was a fun year. I had a great apartment, a great room, and it was my final year so I had room for a lot of fun classes.

I don’t know what I could have done differently. All my previous years we had co-existed peacefully. If I were to suggest some actions to you, with the power of hindsight, I would say this: keep your belongings to a minimum so they’re easy to clean, don’t share anything until you know someone, stay neat and tidy, don’t touch other people’s stuff, be respectful, keep a low volume when at home, and go out and have fun.

I remember E’s stuff piled in a heap on the floor in our shared pantry and it felt like it reached my waist at it’s highest point. I also remember having E’s stuff spill out every time I opened one cupboard because she had a shelf on it, and I had another. However, I will always be grateful that I refused to share my stuff from the very moment I stepped in. In my previous apartments, we’d cooked meals, shared things, and been respectful and grown more communal over time. However, in this apartment, A and B agreed to share space with E, which meant E filled all their space with her stuff. A and B were left with almost no space and eventually, A started storing things in my space, the only cleared areas left, because E kept collecting more stuff to bring in.

Sometimes there’s not much you can do, so make the best of it. Claim your space. I wish, looking back, that I’d bought a larger shelf so that I had more space to store items away from her hoard. Also, I wish that I’d had a bad of gloves and disposable disinfectant wipes for cleaning the bathroom. Sometimes you’re just a bad match with a roommate and you have to make the best of it. So try to do so gracefully and know that it will eventually end.