I spent my whole summer dying of excitement to finally move on to college. I knew where I was going sooner than everyone in my high school since I got in early decision to Amherst College. As the year went on, I learned that Amherst does not let you choose roommates. Part of me was happy because it isn’t like I wanted the responsibility of choosing someone. At least if Amherst chose a terrible roommate, I could blame the crappy system instead of myself. The other part of me feared ending up in a "roommate from hell" situation. What if I got someone who parties hard every night and throws up everywhere? What if my roommate didn’t want to speak more than one word to me? Or worse, what if she was a Trump supporter? I didn’t know what to expect because Amherst was known for putting people from completely different backgrounds together. And to make it more painful, Amherst was really making housing assignments suspenseful by waiting until late August to let us know.

I ended up getting my current roommate about a week before move-in day since there was an issue with gender balancing and with the system that caused them to switch my original roommate with another girl. My new roommate, Sarah, hit me up pretty soon after getting the email telling us about the switch up. We messaged a little and she seemed nice enough, but I learned that it was completely different to speak to someone online than speaking to them in person. As move-in day crept closer, I grew more nervous about meeting the person I was going to live with for the next year. We finally met 20 minutes after I got on campus. Thing is, I didn’t realize that I met her. While I was super anxious about meeting Sarah, I had so much to do that week that I didn’t do the normal thing of stalking her on Instagram and Facebook. I was worried about being late to the first orientation event since I was so late at arriving. We didn’t account for New York City having a lot of traffic into the travel time and we took so many stops. So of course, I wasn’t completely focused on the faces of all the unfamiliar people when I first got to my new home.

All of a sudden, this random girl just says "LESLEY" so enthusiastically while I’m going down the staircase. I didn’t recognize her, wasn’t in the best mental state, and some people saw my terrible selfies on Snapchat so I suspected it was someone who recognized me from that. I gave a lackluster hi and moved on. She also didn’t mention who she was or introduced herself as my roommate, which I think could have helped the situation a bit. Later on, she admitted to me that this disappointing meeting made her afraid of what the next year was going to be like, which I just thought was the funniest thing I have ever heard.

I didn’t officially meet her until later in the day. What I didn’t expect was to automatically click with her. I don’t think Amherst could have paired me with anyone better than her. All you hear from our dorm is the insane laughter and sobbing of two stressed out procrastinators (I would be surprised if our dorm neighbors still don’t hate us from the noise level). I love the stupid moments, the roasts and shade we throw at each other, and exchange of ‘I hate you’s every ten minutes because it honestly shows how close we have become within a few weeks. It was honestly the best mistake Amherst could make and I’m glad that next year, I won’t be the upperclassman telling the freshmen that I just tolerated my roommate. I’ll get to be the one explaining how she was the pain in the neck that actually helped me adjust to and love the Amherst experience.