Roommates can be either a blessing or a curse. They leave their dirty dishes in the sink, but then they leave you a surprise box of your favorite candy on your bed when you have a bad day. The typical college student has maybe two to three roommates. Imagine having 15.

This past summer I was given the opportunity to travel to a town I had never heard of to be an Acting Apprentice at the Berkshire Theatre Group with 15 other 18-23-year olds that I had never met. These people were from all over the country ranging from Austin, Texas to Toronto, Canada. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. The cherry on top of my nerves was the fact that I had never been away from the town I grew up in for longer than two weeks and my apprenticeship was a three-month program in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

I had received the names of my five other roommates about a week before I was about to arrive. My jaw dropped when I saw that there were girls from Yale, Princeton, AND Harvard. A Southern Belle born and raised in South Georgia was going to be chopped liver compared to them. Not only were there six of us in a room and 16 of us in one house, but we also had to share bunk beds, and each of us pleaded to the gods that we would score a bottom bunk. I prayed we would have something in common other than the fact that we were all stuck in the same boat for three months of our lives.

The house we were put in for the summer was an antique New England home complete with no air conditioning and plenty of creepy crawlers. Living in a house with that many people created some interesting situations. As a whole, we used up maybe 20 bags of trash a week that we had to store in the basement until our trash day. Once, we flushed the toilet the wrong way, and we created a personal shower in the living room. 16 ENTIRELY different people were spending the summer sharing one fridge, a broken washing machine, and multiple sets of bunk beds. WHAT a nightmare, right?

Wrong.

Those three months were the best times of my life. We turned a temporary house into a home I never thought I would be upset to leave. Every Tuesday night a group of us would snuggle up on our borrowed couch and watch episodes of “The Bachelorette,” yelling at the laptop every time JoJo sent home another potential “soul mate.” I found relief waking up every morning when I looked across the room to see that my roommates were still fast asleep 15 minutes after we were supposed to be out of bed to get ready for rehearsals. In short, a house that could easily be the location of a scary movie made 16 strangers into family.

In short, it’s not about where you are or what you’re doing; it’s about creating meaningful relationships that will last a lifetime. It’s about making memories that will make you smile when you feel like the whole world is on your shoulders. It’s making late night Target runs when you realize that a house full of 16 people is out of toilet paper. It’s gathering on the dusty floor around some of the only furniture you have to share your microwave dinners. It’s the “glass half full” mentality and having a common goal that makes a house a home for 16 misfits pursuing one dream. If complaining about desperately needing a mini fridge ends up leading to a full-fledged conversation about your hopes, dreams, and fears, I’ll take it.

I am forever grateful to the little town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Berkshire Theatre Group for introducing me to some of the best friends a girl could ask for, letting me step past my comfort zone, and for showing me how to decorate a bunk bed successfully.