I’m three weeks into the fall semester of my freshman year and already at the point where the only alone time I get is on the 2nd floor communal bathroom stall. Sharing a 10 x 10 space with one other person is hard enough, now imagine sharing it with two pizza-craving, hormone-raging, birth-controlled teenage girls. Here’s 5 things no one told you about living with room mates:
1. Ownership is a subjective term
From the mysteriously missing four pop tarts under your desk, to finding your room mate running out the door on a saturday night in your romper, the concept of “mi casa es su casa,” now literally applies to everything you own.
2. Life is now a constant game of 21 Questions
Even if you so much as shift in your bunk bed, you will automatically be hit with:
Oh where are you headed to?
Who are you going with?
When will you be back?
Oh so you're going to that fraternity house again?
3. Sharing a mini fridge? More like playing Jenga
Just know that fitting three-person's worth of water, diet coke cans, redbull, and fruit into a 2 x 2 mini fridge is a lot harder than it sounds. It is very likely that the moment you open the door in search of an energy drink to awaken you after yet another 2 hour nap, everything will fall out.
4. I now know how the Black Plague spread throughout all of the Eastern Hemisphere
Picture this: flu season rolls around, your room mate gets sick. The next day, your other room mate gets sick. The day after that, somewhere underneath the quarantined, hand sanitizer-full fort you created for yourself, you get sick too. Every. Single. Time.
5. Go ahead and add psychologist, nurse, and nail technician to your resumé
Whether it be talking your roommate out of texting "that" boy, digging out the first-aid kit from under the sink when someone's foot is bleeding after a night out in heels, or spending a Friday night painting toe nails because how does one even paint their own toe nails, you'll be surprised by how multi-faceted you really are.
At the end of the day, you will come to love your room mates. Although the individual differences between my two roommates and myself are extreme, the community we share in our cute little dorm room with the whiteboard on the door is one that I would not trade for the world, not even for a real-sized bed.
