Living and Growing With Your College Roommate

Going away for college means getting a dorm and unless you requested to have a single room, you will be given a roommate (or maybe even two or three). More often than not, this roommate will be assigned, which means you will have never met them before nor will you know anything about them. Do they have the same taste in music as you? Are they messy? Do they snore? Are they outgoing or are they just going to want to stay in the room all day? The fear of the unknown rises and questions multiply as you begin to imagine the person you will be living with for the next year of your college life.

If you’re lucky, you find that your roommate is another copy of you and the two of you become inseparable instantaneously. Over time, you share secrets and stories and they gradually become your best friend at your home away from home. Then if you’re like me, your freshman year roommate ends up being your roommate for all four years of college.

Your college roommate is a different type of friend in that they will see all of what makes you, you. They will see you at your drunkest, craziest, most studious, saddest, and weirdest. Unlike your high school friends, you won’t be able to just leave them at school until you see them the next day. They will be there from sunrise to sunset, their bed against the opposite wall only three feet away.

When you live with the same person for years at a time, you undoubtedly learn a lot about them. You quickly become acquainted with the entirety of their personality and daily behavior. You see if they’re a morning person or a night person, how long it takes for them to get out of bed, and their eye for interior decoration when you look at their side of the room. Living in close quarters with another person allows you to learn all about their study habits, partying behavior, and organizational skills or lack thereof.

Should your relationship with your roommate be like mine, you will find yourselves cooking together or rather, you’ll attempt to cook and then later decide to order takeout instead after realizing you were craving something else. You’ll be cleaning together, studying together, getting ready for a night out together, borrowing each other’s clothes and makeup, and perhaps even saying hi to each other’s mom when you’re on the phone. Having the same roommate for four consecutive years is an experience that not only helped me survive the jitters of freshman year but also provided me with a friend for life. After countless nights of pigging out, and sharing our deepest, darkest, and most embarrassing secrets, I’ll always keep my roommate close because she already knows too much.