"Oi! Is that his bird?"

George Roberts, Englishman

The English seem like a decent people. They live out on a rock and eke out a living as bankers, merchants, shipbuilders, and rappers. The rappers have a tough life. Not only do they have the impossible task of trying to sound tough with an English accent, but they have to compete with American rappers for audiences with nobody being able to understand a word of what they are saying.

Take the rapper Stormzy. If you crossed Bob Marley and Young Thug, gave the result a drug problem and told him to rap you would begin to understand the level of weirdness that is Stormzy. The only thing weirder than British rap would be seeing John Lennon at a Drake concert with Princess Diana.

The music aside, the English are really decent people. My new roommate, George Roberts, is English and is a good guy. At least he hasn’t stolen or broke anything yet.

I hate to propagate stereotypes, but their strange obsession with tea is absolutely true. George bought a tea kettle before he bought a fan for a dorm with no AC in August. The tea itself is not half bad and he’s been luring people into the room with it so I can’t really say anything negative about it.

Having a decent roommate is more than just avoiding the negatives. It is more about building something a partnership that will allow both partners to survive the trials and tribulations of freshmen year.

The word college stems from the word for partnership. That is quite literally what college is about. Forming partnerships with professors, roommates, intermural soccer teammates, and drinking buddies is vital to a successful college experience. Each partnership is different, but they all are intended to build something, be it for good or ill.

In my opinion, the keys to building anything in an effective partnership are communication and knowledge. If the two people have the exact ideas that would merge and form something great, but they never tell the other their ideas, nothing is built. If the two have the exact same knowledge, the partnership can’t build anything greater than one person in the partnership could build.

It is difficult to imagine building anything great in a college dorm, but it has been done. Mark Zuckerberg did it. Snapchat was founded by two frat brothers. Go out and give building a shot. You might drop out of college and become a billionaire. Or you might fail. Either way, it’s a great story.