It is your first hours of college, and you are in your new dorm room unpacking when in walks your new roommate, the person with whom you will be sharing a small space for the next nine months. For some, this could be your first encounter with a friend-to-be, for others, it might be a future horror story.
It is your first hours of college, and you are in your new dorm room unpacking when in walks your new roommate, the person with whom you will be sharing a small space for the next nine months. For some, this could be your first encounter with a friend-to-be, for others, it might be a future horror story.
Jessica, a recent graduate of Williams College, in Massachusetts, had a freshman roommate nightmare. Her roomie seemed to thrive in constant mess and once left a banana peel on the floor, which Jessica slipped on, spraining her ankle.
Her roommate also had a habit of borrowing clothing without asking. "I remember getting packages from J. Crew, and leaving them on my bed," says Jessica. "She would open and wear them before I had even seen the clothing."
Clothing was not the only thing that Jessica's roommate would "borrow." She would often come home to find her roommate napping in her bed! "At some point, she must have had the brilliant idea that if her sheets were dirty, it made the most sense just to sleep in my bed whenever she felt like it."
It got worse. Jessica's roommate had a boyfriend who spent a lot of time in the room--a common source of tension between roommates. One evening, Jessica walked into the bathroom shared between her and her roommate to find the boyfriend using her toothbrush. For many, this would have been the last straw, but Jessica stuck it out for the year and lived to tell the tale. Unfortunately, she did so by avoiding her roommate rather than confronting the situation.
Most students don't encounter the monster roommate, but to keep strife to a minimum, Dr. Carol Schmitz, director of residential communities at the University of Southern California (USC), suggests these strategies:
1. Don't room with your best friend. Great friends do not always make great roommates and being compatible roommates will not necessarily mean that you must be friends.
2. Be open and honest. Communication is the way to learn to respect one another's needs. Have an initial discussion about any concerns the two of you may have. By setting clear boundaries early on in the relationship, you and your roommate should be better equipped to solve misunderstandings before they are blown out of proportion.
USC takes this one step further by requiring freshman roommates to create a contract based on a discussion of issues that might arise over the course of the year, including differing ideas of cleanliness, study and sleep habits, and the regularity of visitors to the room. These contracts are often reexamined around the six-week mark, when roommates typically start to feel more comfortable with each other.
Omar Shakir, a sophomore at Stanford University, says you should stay open-minded even if your roommate is not like you at all: "My freshman roommate was my total opposite. I'm liberal and more stressed. He was very conservative and chill. It was great to get a different perspective, and his good qualities rubbed off on me."
3. Confront problems first, then get help. Approach your roommate first rather than call your parents or a friend to complain. Try to work through the difficulties, then if the situation grows into something more than you feel you can handle with a one-on-one discussion, consider speaking with your Residential Advisor (RA). An RA can act as an unbiased mediator to help you and your roommate work through the issues you are having.
No doubt your freshman-year roommate will play a significant role in your first-year experience. By working to make the relationship a positive one, he or she will be someone with whom you share a few late night pizzas or even someone who becomes your life-long friend.
Article by, Jesse Nankin and courtesy of www.careersandcolleges.com
