When you leave your family to go to college, there’s always a fear that your living situation will be unlivable. We’ve all heard the tropes about college roommates.

There are the ones that don’t know how to clean, that leave their plates- rusting over with peanut butter and jelly- out in the open. There are the ones that never sleep, and consequentially keep you awake with their fluorescent desk-lamps and frantic typing.

There are the ones that you never get to know because they’re never in the room, and there are ones that seem glued to their beds. So when I applied to be assigned to a random roommate, I was really gambling.

When my roommate and I met, it was clear that we were very different. In high school, she had played basketball and I had been in theatre. She liked video games, and I liked books. She was outgoing and made friends with everyone, while I was more reserved and liked to keep to myself. We were almost complete opposites, and yet, we got along from the get-go.

Within the first two weeks of school, we had entrusted each other with little details of our lives before college. She told me about her little cousin, Max, and how she loved him like he was her in own kid. I told her about my parent’s ongoing divorce. We told each other about people that we had fallen for in the past, and we talked about the little life lessons that we had learned in our 18 years of life. We even read each other segments from our high school journals and diaries.

Looking back, I think those early weeks of late-night conversations were really what established our relationship. We learned to trust each other from early on. We let the other in on our thoughts and our lives, and I think that our relationship really built from there.

As time went on, our conversations went beyond past experiences and moved into our current philosophies on life. My roommate had a strong belief in the universe. She believed that the sun and the moon needed each other to balance out.She believed in soul-mates and that everything happened for a reason.She also believed in carpe-diem- seizing the moment.

During the winter of our freshman year, I was reluctant to reach out to someone that I had had feelings for a long time. After talking about him for months, my roommate was the one who finally gave me the push I needed to reach out to him. My roommate taught me to get over my fears of looking like a fool or making a mistake.

She constantly reiterated that life was too short to get worried about being embarrassed -- I admired that in her. Her advice brought me back to simpler times when I was a kid; when I went after what I wanted and didn’t care what other people thought. Living with her has taught me to take life by the horns and just go for it.

There were times when I worried that I didn’t teach my roommate like she had taught me. I knew what I had learned from her, but what had I done for her besides listening to her stories? But whenever I began to doubt myself, my roommate reminded me that she appreciated me for my willingness to listen and give her advice when she needed it.

She appreciated me because I was calm about everything, and always put a positive spin on things. By the end of our freshman year, we established that she and I were like the sun and moon. We were opposites, but we balanced each other out and learned from each other.

Three years later, I’m still roommates with her, and we plan to live together after college. We were really lucky with our roommate assignment. After all of these years, I’m really grateful that I left my roommate assignment to chance freshman year.Like my roommate, I believe in the universe.

I think that sometimes the world works in mysterious ways so that you meet certain people. If it weren’t for school, I don’t know if my roommate and I would have ever met, but I’m glad that we did. In our three years here, I have learned more life lessons from her than I have from many people on this earth. I practically consider her a sister.

So, if you’re going to college soon or trying to find a roommate, consider putting your fate in the universe’s hands and choose a random assignment.It allows you to meet a person that you might not have chosen otherwise, and as long as you are open and trusting with one another, you can learn a lot about not only other people but about yourself too.