The Roommate
While most of us spent the month of December shopping, cooking and prepping for holidays, I had the privilege of meeting with many of my clients who were home from college for their Winter Break. It was very exciting to meet with the freshman who had just completed their first semesters as well as reconnect with upperclassmen who had settled into their own rhythms.
The common theme that I heard from all of these students was that of The Roommate. I had my share of roommate saga back in the day and as I listened to story upon story from my clients it got me thinking. These eighteen year olds are leaving their families and homes and embarking on their first ever independent living experience. This is the first time that many of these students have had to share a bedroom and personal space with anyone, let alone a practical stranger. Most of them move into a generic room with two beds, two desks and two dressers. After decorating with twinkle lights, plush pillows and loads of photos from high school ( these being the girls’ rooms, the boys may or may not add a comforter to cover the thin college mattresses) the room assumes a cozy ambience despite the concrete walls.
Traditionally roommate matching involved the institution administering a simple survey about basic rooming habits and then pairing each freshman with a roommate. In the age of social media, many students are joining Facebook groups created specifically for their own class and school. Within these groups the rising freshman introduce themselves, get to know one another and often befriend someone who they ask to be their roommate. Thus, The Roommate relationship is launched.
As move-in day arrives the roommates usually start out fairly benign. Acquaintances and friendships form in the early part of the semester while everyone is nervously adapting to their new environs. As the students settle into their routines and become more comfortable, patience and politeness can give way to less considerate co-existence .
My provincial research methodology involves talking with friends, friends’ college kids, my kids’ friends in college and any random college student I have been afforded the luxury to drill for good roommate stories. The tales of The Roommate include but are not limited to freshman being excluded by a roommate with other hall-mates, roommates not speaking to one another because one was coughing too loud, a roommate urinated in her own bed and left the mess, roommates having their friends sleep in the other roommate’s bed without permission, and the colossal err of sex in the room while the roommate is present.
While writing this post, I took to the interwebs to conduct some more ‘very formal empirically based’ research (sarcasm ensues). My source about most things is of course, Facebook. I posted a request for “most outrageous roommate stories” and was astonished by the responses. Some people sent me a private message thinking perhaps their story was a bit too personal, but I did have over forty comments of outrageous roommate stories.
This post grew out of my thinking about the difficulties that one may encounter with a roommate after hearing about so many from my clients who were home for break. Some roommates become lifelong best friends, some roommates never speak again and some are probably somewhere in between. I felt thoughtful and sometimes worried about some of the students that had to return to unhealthy relationships in their most intimate living situations.
But, after doing my fancy shmancy research on Facbeook I realized that my thoughtful and somewhat serious post had taken a hard right turn. I enjoyed so many of the comments that I feel it is only fair to share some of the most outrageous roommate stories that I received. It would be unfair to enjoy these all of these stories by myself:
My roommate and I snuck a toaster oven into our dorm room. Toasted a bagel the next AM. It caught fire. Like flames inside of the toaster.
A friend of mine entered her freshman dorm room to discover her roommate sitting naked on the bed with a giant snake coiled in a tree branch mounted on the wall over her head.
My freshman roommate started dating my ex-boyfriend shortly after we broke up and asked me to find somewhere else to sleep so they could be together. Then she wanted to room together the next year!
My housemates decided, without me, that we wouldn’t turn the heat on until the thermostat read 55 degrees to cut our bills down. I complained, they told me they wouldn’t budge and I should just get a space heater for my room. I thought, “well that’s gonna cost just as much if not more, but okay!” I was nice and warm and toasty in my room, and the rest of the house was an ice box.
A girl had a baby in the bathroom of our suite freshman year. She was visiting our suite mate. We heard a weird sound, like a duck quacking and realized it was a baby. We had to call 911 and the paramedics came to our suite. My friend loaned her a towel. She did not want it back.
One roommate while I was interning in DC spelled out “Welcome to DC” in condom wrappers. Very classy girl!! (Also very busy).
My freshman year roommate was a born-again Christian. I walked into sing alongs in my room all of the time- a bunch of kids sitting in a circle on the floor singing about Jesus, complete with a guitar. So much fun for this Jew from Bethesda.
My freshman year roommate had a different guy in the room pretty much every night. They usually came into the room after I had gone to sleep but being a light sleeper...lol!
My roommate heard there was a lice outbreak in a fraternity (that neither she nor I ever went to) but she caught me coming out of my room and pinned me down to do a lice check.
My college roommate and I stole a Trump banner from the wrestling house. The next day on Facebook one of them wrote on their Facebook page that if the person who stole their property didn’t return It they would physically harm them.