Well, it’s finally here, the last week of my junior year. In some ways, it’s bitter-sweet. Bitter because I still have several finals ahead of me, and sweet because I have been counting down the days till I am able to be back at home again for summer.
Of course, this past year presented me with plenty of learning experiences: understanding that statistics will never be my forte, accepting that a diagnosed illness is always better than an undiagnosed one, and the discovery that living alone — while great for many reasons- makes you miss having a roommate sometimes.
I was fortunate enough to live in a studio apartment this year, and let me tell you, the benefits were great. I had the ability to come home after a long day of classes and not worry about whether throwing my backpack on the floor would bother anyone. I had the privilege of going to the gym whenever I wanted because it was only 8 floors below me. And my personal favorite, I got to spend every night of the weekend binge-watching whatever I wanted and using the kitchen for late-night popcorn and cooking concoctions. There’s no doubt, living alone has a vast amount of benefits.
Still, the biggest thing I learned from not having a roommate around was, well, sometimes I missed having a roommate around.
The truth is, having a roommate is great because it allows for you to come home and talk to someone about your day and what’s been going on in your life. Don’t get me wrong, we all need alone time to decompress during stressful weeks and moments, but there’s nothing better than being able to knock on someone’s door and ask if they want to join you in attempting to bake that new Pinterest recipe.
Most people probably haven’t thought about this before, and if you haven’t lived alone, I’m not sure why you would. Often times, when we do have roommates, we spend more time believing that living alone would be far better than living with other people: you’d have the place to yourself all the time, you wouldn’t have to worry about dishes or laundry, and you would never have to feel overcrowded sharing your space with another person. The funny thing is, when you live alone, you do appreciate the ability to do those things, but you also miss having someone there to join you for late-night dinners or watch your favorite TV show with you.
When there isn’t someone else sharing that space with you, it also becomes incredibly easy to get in your own head and start overthinking all the items on your agenda. You overthink assignments you haven’t started, you overthink deadlines you haven’t met, and you overthink day-to-day life decisions like whether that girl in your group project is angry at you because you didn’t say hi to her in the library.
Living alone can be great, but at the end of the day, it can make you miss the times you walked in and said a quick hi to your roommate as she was loading her dishes in the dishwasher.
What is the biggest thing I learned from living along? That having a roommate around to ask a simple, “Hey, how was your day?” means a lot more than you probably think it does.
In the future, yes, I would do it again, but it definitely made me realize that sometimes, we all wish we had a roommate around.
