There is a worry that plagues everyone after high school: Will your college roommate(s) be good or bad? And it’s not just whether they’re good or bad, but will you get along with them? No one knows what to expect when it comes to living with strangers. The Complete Idiot's Guide to College Survival by Laurie Rozakis says that one thing to keep in mind when getting into a rooming situation is that “everybody has a bad roommate at some point. Look at it for what it is, a learning experience, and know that, at the very least, you will have some good stories to tell down the road because of it.” The beginning of semester can vary greatly from that of finals week. With this knowledge tucked away, we must prepare for every kind of situation to arise.
One way to prepare appropriately for the time you spend living with a roommate is to refine the way you communicate. Do you stomp around and huff and puff, assuming that they will understand? Or do you discuss it and tell them exactly what is bothering you? Obviously the latter seems the better option, but it is always so surprising to find out how many people still chose to do the first one. Marvin J. Ashton said, “If we would know true love and understanding one for another, we must realize that communication is more than a sharing of words. It is the wise sharing of emotions, feelings and concerns. It is the sharing of oneself totally.”
I roomed with someone I knew my first semester of college and it was such a bad decision. I had decided we would have a fantastic semester and that was crushed with these few words: You can’t do that. She sounded just like Lorelai Gilmore, who once said, “As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I’m totally flexible.” Life doesn’t work this way, nor should it. I constantly tried to come up with ways we could compromise on things and all that ever occurred was my ideas getting shot down and her feeling attacked. This experience made me almost decide not to go back to school. However, I decided I would try it out again. There was no way the next semester could be as bad as the first, was there? If only this had been true.
Roommates can also be very untidy. One of my roommates would eat in the living room and place her dirty bowls and plates on the floor nearest her and then leave them for someone else to clean up. It used to be a rare occurrence, but as we got closer to the end of the semester it got so much worse.
I realize that my messy roommates grew up differently than I did and that if I expect them to live up to my standards of cleanliness then I must tell them what I think should occur and be willing to listen to what they think. This is nowhere near the type of roommate agreement that is constantly referred to by Sheldon Cooper in "The Big Band Theory," at least. Oftentimes that agreement is referenced only for Sheldon’s benefit. In one episode, he interrupts Leonard’s shower at one point with this excuse: “According to the Roommate Agreement, Paragraph 9, Subsection B: The right to bathroom privacy is suspended in the event of force majeure, and believe me, I am experiencing a very majeure force.” However, whenever Leonard wants to reference the roommate agreement and it doesn’t benefit Sheldon, he ignores it. This type of one-sided roommate agreement is not conducive to a positive living space. As roommates we agree to compromise whether it is written in the contract or not. Anytime we choose to live with someone else we decide to give up some of our freedom in order to make room for another individual to also inhabit our living space.
We will not know what kind of roommate we get in college. As Jimmy Fallon said in the Roommates section of his comedy routine, The Bathroom Wall, “they have the compatibility tests/you fill out at the beginning of the year/that’s such a joke,” because you never know what you will end up with. Fallon continues to describe how there are even times when people have received a rooming assignment to room with someone who is exactly the opposite of everything they put in that test. Despite the possibility of receiving a roommate who has nothing in common with you, there is always the need to work for compromise. It doesn’t matter if they are completely different from us or exactly the same, we have to work hard at sharing and meshing worlds for however long we are with them, be it a semester or the full four years. Being able to resolve conflicts through communication and compromise are perfect examples of how we can coexist with others happily. Learning and maintaining this ability of compromise and communication makes it possible to effectively mesh worlds and live in the same area, but still maintain who you are.
