When you give a girl an art student as a roommate you open yourself and your room up to a lot. You open your room up to scattered art supplies and seemingly endless paper scraps as well as overflowing creativity. Basically, everything any art major may need is in our room (not really, but it can feel like it).
There will be times when what you need is to sit in a dorm bathroom for hours on end, listening to music and watching your roommate basket weave out of the bathtub. (Trust me, it wasn't as weird as it sounds, or was it?) There might be times where your roommate is so invested in her current project that you don't want to disturb anything in fear of messing something up. And in all honesty, there might be times when you walk into a room that has art supplies and projects laid out across the entire floor. You know the whole "the floor is lava", you don't know what that's actually like until you live with an art student (in a dorm nonetheless).
But you also open yourself (and your room for that matter) to overwhelming creativity. If and/or when you get a project where you have no clue what you're supposed to do and it pertains to something "artsy"- you have another brain with you to give you ideas and help (thank you!!!).
Granted, what you may expect from a stereotypical "art student" isn't who my roommate is. My roommate, while still an art student, is a graphic design major so most of her work is online. Or so I thought. When we signed up to room together, I don't think that either of us considered what it would really be like.
I'm not saying that it was bad, but with me not being the most organized person in the world in addition to a lot of art supplies hiding in spots around the room, it was… a file cabinet of random papers and supplies. I type this, laughing and it's not that either of us was particularly messy (except my bad), but I find it amusing that when I sat on the floor or somewhere I'd find a stray paper shred or a bead or even a pencil.
I think what makes me smile and laugh the most is during freshman year when we sat in the handicapped bathroom my roommate's floor. The bath filled with weaving reed-things (sorry I don't know the name of them) and we probably sat there for hours upon hours, doing our homework - except hers consisted of basket weaving whereas mine was the complete opposite.
The time I walked in and just stood in the doorway with some sort of uneasy feeling- later finding out that you were in the ER because of some project using an Exacto knife, I will say that both definitely make for an exciting life and roommate experience. But all in all, I wouldn't have had anyone else as a roommate.
A roommate who bleeds creativity and an amazing artistic ability as well as lots of determination. A roommate who enjoys the little things like the movie nights we had and stupid jokes that made us laugh so hard we cried.
So what do you get when you get an art student for a roommate?
You get a friend for life.
