Let's talk about the Nightmare first. At the beginning of my first semester, I met my roommate and she was pretty cool but didn't say much, neither did I (so who am I to judge?). Honestly, I thought she was just shy like me so I didn't say anything. We made our roommate agreement no problem but then something started to change after a month. She suddenly applied to change rooms and I didn't have a clue what on Earth was going on. Was it me? Did I say something? I thought of everything that happened between the beginning and then and nothing was out of the ordinary... to me. We were friends and in the same Living Learning Community so I thought everything was fine until it wasn't.

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She didn't even tell me. After I received the email about the roommate change, I asked her about it and she said: "yeah, its because my allergies" and whatnot so I tried to be understanding but it all came back to something I heard her say but never really thought was relevant. One day I came back from classes and she was on the phone. I put my bag down and I didn't mean to eavesdrop, I just heard her say that her roommate had returned and then something about going to eat and leaving the "baggage" in the room. She goes home a lot so I thought it was about her stuff. It was only about a week and a half after that. We didn't seem to have a problem with each other until now so its weird.

Basically, after talking to her, I found it was a combination of being around each other too much and I am a recluse so I love spending my free time in my room. She, on the other hand, I guess, thought I didn't like her because I like keeping to myself and she thought I was trying to intimidate her or something. But honestly, she was the one acting intimidating because it was a really weird, awkward and restrictive 2 months we did live together. I felt really suffocated when she was in the room because she was not what we had agreed on in the roommate pact. On Saturday mornings, she wanted to clean the whole room and I was talking 18 credit hours so I was really tired but I got up and cleaned because I felt obligated to clean since she was. Basically, a weight I didn't know was on my shoulder lifted.

I waited for my new roommate to come any day and after the third day, I took advantage of that side of the room because I had no idea when or if I was getting a new roommate. Its the middle of the semester and usually by now, everything should be settled and everyone should be getting ready for the midterms. A week passed and nothing. I went to a meeting and came back to my door unlocked... uhhh, I was scared. I knew I locked the room so why is it open??? And although it was my room, I knocked because... why not? When I walked in the room was a mess and the things I had put on the unoccupied side was moved around and pushed to my side. This nice girl, looking only 18 years old, says hi, we exchanged names and I'm not an idiot so I knew this was my new roomie. Since then, we have become best friends and have no problem with each other.

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Moral of this experience: Don't settle for a roommate if you feel suffocated (your attending college so added pressure or discomfort wasn't supposed to happen) but getting a stranger as a roommate is a game of Russian Roulette and the odds of this happening again really slim to none.