<p>My rommate in my first NYC apartment in the Village broke up with her boyfriend and being depressed swallowed a bunch of pills. She was talking on the phone in the living with her friend when she passed out. It was 3:00 a.m. on a worknight, so I was asleep in the one bedroom we shared. Needless to say, the friend was concerned and called the police. They were unable to get in through the deadlock bolts and chains on the front door so broke in the window into the bedroom (which looked out onto a fire escape). Needless to say having a man climb through your bedroom in NYC at 3:00 a.m. is very scary. Roommate turned out to be fine--had just fallen asleep and woke up easily. </p>
<p>This same roommate had a friend over once who casually put a handgun on the dinette table while he did a line of coke using a dollar bill. I changed apartments after that, even though the apartment was at 8th and Broadway and a real find.</p>
<p>My first roommate freshman year-'71- informed me when we met that she wanted to get into another dorm as soon as she could (she obviously did not get her first choice like I did and the dorm she wanted was one I didn't want), she also commented that her fox trimmed winter coat was too good for Madison (it was- this was blue jeans, tail end of the Vietnam protest era...); not much later she was gone.</p>
<p>I was assigned to a triple room freshmen year and one of my roommates was a bit of a loon. Every morning between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m., she would open the window shades and fling open the window in our bedroom and say "Oh wow!" I guess it was the smell of fresh air or something. Fortunately, she transferred after first semester. Although my other roommate and I weren't totally compatible at that point in our lives, things changed and we are still good friends almost 40 years later.</p>
<p>It is interesting to read all these roommate horror stories and think about the stories we read on the site now. I do wonder at times whether our offspring think that roommate "issues" are something new. ;)</p>
<p>Interesting- one year I literally had a "fresh off the farm" roommate (she transferred after commuting from her parents' dairy farm to an area two year campus)- she started the year off being an early riser but became corrupted by dorm life. She was nice.</p>
<p>My first rm/mt or her friends stole my typewriter, jewelry, checks. I had been complaining to RA from first week on about her sneaking boys into room, phone calls thruout night, etc., but once checks stolen, the police were involved. Rm/mt was still not sanctioned, but then she got pregnant and left. Though I still managed to get low A average, every other semester seemed easy.</p>
<p>The housing situation was a major consideration to me, and far less important to S. I liked that his college gives kids a week to sample 7 houses, and then gets to pick roommates.</p>
<p>My freshman roommate travelled the 6 or so hours to school from her home and realized that she had forgotten to bring ALL her clothes. This meant I had to loan her my stuff until hers arrived, which was ok with me, except that even after her own wardrobe arrived, she maintained the nasty habit of borrowing mine frequently (without asking-- ever.) I was incredulous when one day she borrowed my shoes (again, without asking) and then had the audacity to complain that they pinched (her feet were bigger than mine.)</p>
<p>I don't know what happened to her ultimately. We lost touch and now she appears on the periodic list of alumni who cannot be located.</p>
<p>My freshman roommate had dated a heroin dealer. That had pluses and minuses. On the minus side, the obvious (I had to call her shrink when she was on a bad trip and he had to advise me about what to do) and on the plus side, she introduced me to the Velvet Underground. I must admit, "Heroin" is still my favorite song.</p>
<p>She left college and went to work for NYU in bursar or some such. She eventually went to live on a kibbutz in Israel after, sadly, being mugged and having teeth knocked out. There she got married at 20, brought her 36 year old kibbutznik back to the US (he was their electician), became widowed, (she had a tough life), went back to college, became a computer programmer, met a slightly younger computer programmer, married and had another child.</p>
<p>She went from the most uncoventional life of all of us to the most conventional. I am glad her life worked out for her.</p>
<p>My sophomore year I had a roommate who didn't bathe or launder his clothes. He said that deodorants were an unnecessessary "crutch" for people who didn't bathe often enough, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was Exhibit A in his own evidence. He was also 29 years old when the rest of us were 19, which caused him to dismiss anything we told him (like "You smell bad!") as the immature comments of children. I'm sure he never graduated because he could only pass his math and electronics courses. He always dropped his other English and general ed courses.</p>
<p>My freshman roommate was as different from me as could be; I was naive and from a relative rural area; she was wise in the ways of the world and from a rich suburb of Washington DC. She came to orientation two days late, smoked, and was even more messy than I was. The best thing was she found a boyfriend a couple of weeks into the semester and spent almost all her time with him. The most "horror-ble" time was when I was awoken in the middle of the night by a ghost--turned out it was my roommate, wearing a hospital robe and an arm cast; she had fallen out of a tree and was treated at the hospital before being sent "home."</p>
<p>One time she had several of us looking all over for a "lost" contact lens. Turned out it was "lost" in her eye!</p>
<p>I lost track of her after freshman year, and sometimes wonder what became of her.</p>
<p>My freshman roommate was a music performance major and decided about a 6weeks into school that she needed to be a redhead. We had a small sink in our room, in which we dyed her hair. What a mess of orange goo around the sink, staining my hands (like mercurochrome), and of course, leaving her with a truly garish shade of red. I don't think the performance thing ever worked out...</p>
<p>My first roommate came back to the room after class and calculated baseball statistics on an old accountant-style, zillion-button mechanical adding machine for hours at a time. Disappeared after one semester.</p>
<p>Yeah, roommates. My freshman year roommate was a sophomore anorexic who had a fridge (way before that was the norm) so she could have her raw egg drink every morning to get better. I made two close friends that year and introduced them just before summer and they spent the summer together and became best bud's and guess who was the third wheel. Oh well. My sophomore roommate slit her wrists in our apartment, no lie. She was on a fast track med school deal and had flunked a test....that was heavy sh** and how. I lived with strangers junior year (very nice) and friends senior year (graduated after fall term) and never went back afterwards. Loved my classes, though. Yeah, roommates. My sister's freshman year roommie had a mental breakdown and left school. My husband's found religion and left school. It takes all kinds to make a world.</p>
<p>I had a bulimic roommate. I remember waking up to watch her force-puking in our room, right between our beds. (Yuck!) The same roommate made friends with a really sketchy college athlete. Well she was rich and he was poor. She lent him $ and he left a note on our door one day that he had slid it under the door. When it wasn't there, she accused me and my boyfriend of stealing it! She called the police who told us not to worry, they had a number of complaints about that athlete and were sure he had never put the $ there. She was a mess.</p>
<p>Later that semester, we were robbed. The police suspected her athlete friend. (Oh, and she had told everyone her mother was some beautiful, famous model and that's why it was so important to her to be thin. When her mom finally came to visit, she was a heavy ethnic woman wearing a full length mink coat to a college dorm in warm weather.)</p>
<p>I don't have a horror story but a sad one. My very first roommate in Gradschool, later became an astronaut at NASA, and died in the Challenger explosion.</p>
<p>First semester I had the usual roomate with a boyfriend who spent every night in our room. Very uncomfortable. Second semester I had a very depressed roomate who felt the world was against her and left before the semester was over. I remember being so jealous of the kids that had roomates that they'd become friends with. </p>
<p>When my sister graduated from high school and decided to go to the same school we decided to room together. I definately saw a lot of siblings and twins that were roomates, and my sister was definately one of the best roomates I had. We each had our own friends, but since we'd lived together for so long, we had no problem rooming together. It lasted a year and then we went on to find other roomates that were also a good fit. I definately believe in rooming with "the devil you know"</p>
<p>My first roommate was from New Jersey. We went to school in Columbia, MO. The first odd thing about him I noticed was that he brought boxes of Tootsie Rolls and canned beets. He lived on that staple, hardly ever going down to the dining hall. His personal hygene was terrible. There was a laundry service in the dorm which would pick up linens twice a week. He never used it. Sometimes I'd come back from class and he would be lying on my bed because he said it was cleaner. He did everything he could to flunk out. Once he wrote a 5 page English paper on Women's Lib in about 10 minutes. Just turned in the rough draft. His prof. wrote "F" you must be joking." The first sentence read: " The female race has traditionally been"...</p>
<p>This subject came up during our Thanksgiving dinner today. </p>
<p>My SIL shared her freshman year experience--1st roommate cried constantly and went home after six weeks. 2nd roommate had different boys in just about every night for sex. She kept the condom (as least she practiced safe sex in the 70's) wrappers from each guy--had quite a collection in shoe boxes under her bed. SIL asked for roommate to move out as she couldn't ever sleep in room. 3rd roommate got pregnant and left in Feb.--after that the college didn't give her another one for the rest of the year.</p>
<p>Given how critical your room-mate can be to the first year of your college experience, and how much aggrevation everyone endures when it doesn't work out, you'd think colleges would invest in single rooms for freshmen. They could be shoe-box small (in fact, half the size of existing rooms): It would still be better than having to cope with all this drama while you trying to adjust to the experience of living away from home. I know many people think learning to live in close proximity to someone else is part of the college experience, but when ever in your life will you do this again with someone you've never met before? Its just not a life skill that you really need.</p>