Going to college I had always heard you shouldn’t room with your best friend, so I began my search on the UF Class of 2019 Facebook page. After many weeks of failed messages to girls, I thought I'd get along with, scrolling through the standard "I don't go out but I like to have a good time!!" and the "I love to go on Netflix and just hang out!! :-)" I had started to lose hope. Luckily however I messaged and Facetimed with a girl and after an hour long conversation I thought I had found my perfect roommate, someone who was exactly like me in every way and was my literal other half. I was so excited to take on recruitment with her, experience game days together, and to have a two-semester long sleep over with someone I thought would be my best friend. While I had looked forward to those things, sometimes you can’t always attain a reliable idea of someone from the way they present themselves on social media.

Unfortunately this girl did not become my best friend, and on both our parts, we let the roommate relationship get to such a point, that at the very end of the first semester, that there was no way we would have stayed friends after the term was over. After a very dramatic tipping point, I decided that I needed a new roommate. Fortunately, a girl I really liked from my sorority lived in the same dorm area as me, and was also experiencing roommate tension, and our roommate happened to be friends as well! After much deliberation, my friend would move into my dorm and my old roommate would move across the area. I had reservations about living with this girl, I’ll be honest. I had a specific place for everything in my room and went to bed before 11 almost every weeknight, she, on the other hand, was much more laid back, went to bed much later, and lived in her mess. We had joked about swapping roommates all semester, but never acted upon it because I think we honestly didn’t know if we would get along as roommates either. But after I had had enough, I knew it was the best decision I could make at the time.

And now I am so incredibly thankful that we made that decision. Living with this girl has been everything that I had wanted out of a freshman dorm roommate. We got to have a semester long sleepover, we got to experience the ups and downs of a first year away from home together, we got to walk to lunch or dinner at our sorority house almost every day together. Living with someone so seemingly different from me, but so similar in the most important ways was the biggest blessing I received this year. She was there for me whenever I needed her, whether it be to scream about how screwed up the Good Life class is when your TA is the absolute worst, when you're having long distance boy troubles, or to be there to just talk and eat a Go-gurt on a hot afternoon. I never imagined that I could become so close to someone I hadn’t even known an entire calendar year, but spending almost every waking, and sleeping, an hour with someone can lead to an amazing friendship.

Thank you Joni, for being the best friend I could have found this year and thank you so much for being the best roommate that I could have ever imagined and for always, always being there for me when I needed you and even when I didn’t know I needed someone.