In the New York Times blog post, “College Education Should Include Rooming With A Stranger,” Anna Altman writes about the impact a roommate can have on the college experience. It’s gleans over the vague idea of a total college experience, such as the parties, harder classes, and more importantly, being independent. Strangely enough, this “total independence,” is actually shared independence, with a roommate. It talks over the balance and experience you gain for having a roommate, that each of us should have a roommate to get the full experience, and that if we did not receive one, we were missing out on a key part of our college career. Without a roommate, we were only getting half of the experience for classes, and not any for our personal growth.
Reading this article, it brings my attention to my own personal experience and how that has so far effected me as a person. I broke one of the rules of the article; that roommates should be random. Instead, we asked each other if we would want to be roommates, and then we requested each other on the housing form. Now when we got to school, everything was great for a little while, but our living patterns just didn't add up. I love this girl to death, but it was better if we were just friends instead of roommates.
After maneuvering through the multiple steps of the change of housing form, I had a different roommate. This made for a much more positive change that led to all over better college experience. So this brings me back to the article, is a random roommate, or at least someone you didn’t think you would room with, a better idea? Is it better that we go blindly into it, instead of having misconceptions about the person we chose? If you would have asked me this at the beginning of the year I would have told you that that was an unnecessary process of college, but now, I would suggest for you to get a random roommate. To not know, or think you know, who you’re rooming with.
In the words of Altman, “Moving students around within dorms can be a headache, but there’s even more at stake: the risk that students will be so unhappy that they might transfer out of the college before sophomore year.” Is actually very similar to what I felt going through this. I was looking for moving to another room and possibly another college. This rings true for more than just my experience. As the article says, more seem to be happy with a random roommate than they do with someone they’ve known all of their life. It’s just how the college experience goes. The fact of the matter is, if you’re rooming with someone you know, or someone you think you might have a lot in common with, you’re really just limiting yourself. You are pushing out any opportunity to grow as a person and learn how to be an independent student. Instead, you’re taking the easy way out and finding someone you can cope with. That you can borderline get along with, and this is not what college is meant for. College is meant for personal growth, not staying in a static, non moving safe bubble.
Getting a random roommate is in fact crucial to the college experience. That it isn’t the classes and parities that make you who you are in college, it’s who you’re around. And, if you are limiting yourself in that aspect, who’s to say you grew to your full potential? How do you know if you are everything you could be? You never gave that random person you were meant to be with and learn from a chance. Instead you locked down someone who you thought was a lot like you. This safety may have shortened your overall experience, and therefore, shorting your overall full potential.
