I feel like a lot of people tend to romanticize the idea of having a roommate and doing everything with them, being best friends, and always getting along. For a few people, this definitely is the reality, but for the rest of us, that is totally not the case.
In the middle of October, the roommate I had originally moved in with decided to move out, and I didn’t get a new roommate until April. So, I’ve had some time to think about the best and worst parts of having a roommate. And as probably expected, there’s more to complain about that to celebrate.
For me, the pros are thing likes: having someone to hang out with, having someone to do face masks with and have girls nights with, and someone to talk to late at night when neither of us can sleep. For the months I lived without a roommate, it was hard to find people to do these sorts of things with, and while it would have made sense to utilize my room for girls nights with my friends, most of them thought my room was depressing because half of it was empty. Now that I have a roommate again, its easier to host girls nights and have friends over since my room is no longer the pessimistic half empty that it used to be.
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Some of the cons that I’ve picked up on are things like: sharing a space with someone who has different definitions of boundaries than you do, trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t want to listen to you, sharing the fridge and the freezer, having different sleep schedules, and having frequent late night ~guests~ in the room.
My roommate in the beginning of the year hated basically everything I did, the room felt like it belonged to her and I was glad when she finally moved out (someone who constantly yells at you for trying to live your life is negativity you just don’t need!). My roommate now is way more chill with how I do things, but we still have our conflicts.
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For example, her and her friends are often hanging out in our room until the wee hours of the morning; this is usually happening while I’m in bed trying to sleep and they’re violating quiet hours. Another example is trying to share the fridge and the freezer. I have an autoimmune disorder and I need to keep my medicine in the fridge which has never been an issue–until my current roommate moved it to make room for her stuff. Trying to talk that one out was difficult as she believed the one corner of the fridge I took up was too much space (she got the rest of the fridge and the freezer). Other examples are things like: being sex-iled three days in a row, her and a friend walking in on me getting dressed, and her coming back under the influence and making a mess.
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Having a roommate is one of the Rites of Passage of college life. Even though my experiences were unusual and mostly not fun, doesn’t mean that every experience will be the same. Most of the girls on my floor love their roommates and have had essentially no problems with them, some of them even became best friends from a random matching process.