Parents have always said that living with your best friends in college is one of the worst decisions you could ever make. They claim that the experience will be nothing like you imagined and that your relationships will be completely different than they were before. Some college-goers choose to heed their parents’ advice and play the random roommate card, while others wade in the rough waters of living with their best friends. Both routes can lead to success or failure, but ultimately, it can be agreed that living with your best friends is a terrible decision.
You will never get any homework done.
Despite the growing number of assignments carefully scripted in your planner, after moving in with your best friends, you find that few of those assignments actually make it out of the idealistic realm that is your agenda. Instead, you find yourself sitting on the kitchen floor with your roommates recounting every minuscule event that happened that day (even if you were together for most of them). This often leads into deep heart to hearts that can result in laughter or tears for hours until – with still, no homework done – you realize that you should have been in bed hours ago.
You will not get any sleep.
Aside from the lack of homework accomplished, sleep will become nearly impossible. If you don’t end up staying up talking all night and your roommates instead, are up late doing homework, they will claim that they, “feel abandoned” if you go to bed before them. It is then almost a guarantee that someone will wake you up first thing in the morning or, if you’re really lucky, in the middle of the night to watch the new One Direction music video that was just released.
You will have to be there through the ups AND the downs.
Unlike random roommates who are usually with you through the ups, but never see the downs, your best friends have already seen you cry, and will see it hundreds of more times after moving in together. You will no longer need to strategically plan your mental break downs for when your roommate has gone out, and you will no longer have to survive the rough patches alone. Instead, break downs can happen at any given moment and each other’s presence (and hopefully some chocolate or a distracting Rom Com) is all that will be needed to get through the tough times together.
Your clothes will go missing all of the time.
Suddenly, your wardrobe will double or triple in size. Even if you don’t intentionally borrow a piece of your roommates’ clothing, there is a high chance that they will end up dressing you in their shirt that apparently goes better with the skirt that you are wearing. Before you know it, you will be playing dress up in each other’s closets at 1:00 AM and then finding each other’s clothes mixed in with yours for the next week.
Privacy will be nonexistent.
It will no longer be acceptable or allowed to assume that closing your bedroom door is the universal sign for “keep out.” Best friends, means open door policy. If your roommate needs you bad enough (or just needs to show you a funny Vine), they will walk right in or, if they are really feeling nice, they will stand outside and knock until you let them in. Occasionally, while in class, you will even receive a Snapchat from your roommate of her in your bed…because she clearly doesn’t have her own.
Passive-aggressive notes don’t work.
With a random roommate, the proper policy to address the situation would be to leave a passive aggressive note next to flowers and a new puppy. That no longer works. Best friends can see right through the faux sincerity and are far more apt to react kindly to mild yelling or a merely aggressive note next to a generous piece of gum.
You have to love them always.
Better yet, they have to love you too. Yes, as roommates, you will get on each other’s nerves more than when you lived apart and you will see sides of each other that you have never experienced before, but at the end of the day, you will realize how blessed you are to live with someone that you love regardless. After a long day, you will come home to best friends that have become your family and nothing in the world could be better because after all, it’s not really a home without love.
