Your freshman year is a year full of firsts: living away from home, having the freedom to do what you want when you want, picking what you’re going to learn and not having anyone on your back to tell you to study or do your homework. Another first is living with a roommate. 

Unlike sharing a room with your siblings, living with a roommate is a completely different experience. If you luck out, she’ll be your best friend and your person. But if not, you could have an experience similar to my own, and she most definitely won’t be your new partner in crime.

My first semester roommate appeared to be perfect. She was blonde, from the midwest, and seemed really chill. We met the first day of orientation, and within 24 hours, she asked me to be her roommate. We laughed at the same jokes, feared the same things about college and wanted the same type of freshman experience. I couldn’t wait to live with her, and I had this whole idea in my head that we would be best friends by Fall Break.

We were fine and dandy until around the third week of school when I made friends with people that she didn't click with. I was spending less time in our room and more time with my new friends...And that's she stopped talking to me. Radio silence. During the rare times she would even look at me, she was glaring. It was awful. When anyone would walk into our room, they would feel the silent tension to the point where they’d just walk in and walk out.  Anyone who knows me knows I do not do well with tense silences. I hate it more than anything. And I hated being in our room and around her because of how she made me feel. A cold war was happening but I had no idea why.      

What I should’ve done was ask her what happened, if she was OK. I should’ve asked if anything had happened to her. Or what I had done or if there was anything I could do differently. What I did instead was hide. I pretty much lived in my new friends’ rooms.  They’d let me hang out in their rooms until we were all half asleep. I even kept my books there so I could study on their floors instead of having to study in my own room. I didn’t want to address the fact that my roommate seemed to hated me.   

I was too scared to ask and I guess she didn't want to bring it up or say it out loud. So we never addressed our problems. We just let them build. She even defriended me on Facebook. 

Walls are thin in dorms -- people would hear her angrily rant to her mother over Skype about me almost every other day. And I am sure she heard me vent about her to my friends on more than one occasion. It wasn’t until both of us (separately and unbeknownst to the other) finally worked up the courage and went to the RA, and said that we couldn’t handle living together, that we even began addressing our issues with each other. But by then, the semester was almost already over and our RA recommended that we just stick it out for a few more weeks. 

Little did I know, she was planning on transferring at the end of the semester and was planning on moving out during my last final. And when I came back to the room, after that last 4 hours exam of my first semester, I found her gone. She packed up everything (including the throw pillow on my bed that she gave me for my birthday in August) and left.   

So learn from my mistakes. If you feel the tension building with your roommate, address it immediately. Talk to your roommate about how you’re feeling. Talk to your RA. The worst thing that can happen is you’ll have a fight, you’ll realize that you and her aren’t meant to live together  and one of you will move out. The best scenario, you two will get over whatever your problems are and will be able to live together harmoniously. And more importantly, maybe even stay friends. 

And on a side note, if my former roommate is reading this, I'm sorry for my part in what happened between us. I hope one day we can be friends.