<p>This is my only concern when it comes to dorms.</p>
<p>What happens if you and your room-mate have completely different sleeping habits. I like going to bed at 10pm, and chances are my room-mate may not feel the same way. I generally like to sleep in silence and my room-mate's typing, lamp, etc. will surly annoy me. :(</p>
<p>1) Is this a common issue? Are the beds usually in different rooms or are there separators? </p>
<p>2) Has anyone dealt with this issue before?</p>
<p>3) If the beds are (in most cases) in the same room, any suggestions on how to deal with this?</p>
<p>Also, these are the colleges I'm looking at: Cornell, UC Berkeley, UPenn.</p>
<p>If you can tackle any or all of these questions, I'd appreciate it. :)</p>
<p>i go to Berkeley, a lot of times your not going to have to go to class in the early morning, so you can go to bed later, but you have to make some concessions to your room-mate, cause a lot of people won't go to bed till way later. That's the thing about living with other people, you can't always do everything you want. You'll be fine, you'll notice that when you get to college you're gonna do a lot of new things.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick response. In regards to Berkeley, how spacious are the rooms? Is it possible to go to sleep while your room-mate is up writing a paper. </p>
<p>I was thinking about making a compromise with my future room-mate to the effect of: each of us going to study in the library after 10PM. Thoughts?</p>
<p>FYI, I try to get 10 hours of sleep a night (amateur bodybuilder).</p>
<p>Most colleges have a questionnaire students complete during the housing process. Sleeping habits - what time do you usually go to bed - is one of the questions on the form. Look at the housing page for the colleges you are most interested in and you'll most likely see a section answering some of your questions.</p>
<p>Some students also look at Facebook for other accepted students and find a roommate for their freshman year. One of my daughter's friends did that with great success - she looked for other students with similar interests and outlooks before contacting them.</p>
<p>Going to bed at 10 will be difficult unless your roommate is on a similar schedule. I would be adament about wanting a roommate that wants to go to sleep at a similar time to you. You may be able to pay a bit more for a single room, but a lot of times they don't offer them to freshman (at Wake Forest some freshman get singles). The halls are just usually kind of loud until 12, and sometimes even after that. Don't be surprised if you change your sleeping habits, but if all else fails, schedule classes LATE!</p>
<p>the dorms at Berkeley are a hamster cage for the most part. I live in Bowles hall (all male all frosh dorm--i didn't choose it) which is great if you want to sleep long hours because you have a side room, with desks in the common room. Clark Kerr and Foothill have big rooms too. But all in all the dorms @ Cal are kinda a rip off, you pay way more money than you should, and you can't do what you want in your own place. Other than that though, living in dorms is awesome because you can meet alot of great friends, and all in all Berkeley is the best fricken place on earth.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that just because you wish to sleep early.......doesn't mean roomy will be in the room at that time. In reality a night owl and a morning person make quite good roommates. One will get the other up perhaps. What you may sacrifice is time in your room as a trade off. Roomy sleeps during day you gotta be quiet just as you'd expect the quiet for you to crash at 10pm. Few folks I know study in their rooms. Most folks don't even socialize that often in their room. You are thinking the room is where the fun is~~~~~~~not so much.</p>
<p>So, as I understand it, you get your own mini-room to sleep in @ Berkeley? This seems like it would be a good arrangement for me. Is every dorm like this?</p>
<p>hazmat,</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. If you don't mind my asking, which Ivy do you attend?</p>
<p>It's common to have a roommate who has different sleep habits from yours. Even with the best match, you have to remember that <em>your</em> sleep habits will probably change when you get to college. </p>
<p>I have a friend who goes to another university that is very studious and has always gone to sleep early (9 -10 pm) with all the lights off and absolutely NO NOISE whatsoever. Her first roommate was not like that, but they BOTH learned to adjust. 10 pm may seem late to you, but for a college student (not just the party type), 10 is still very much an active time for studying, eating, socializing - whatever. Just be aware of that, and give your roommate the benefit of the doubt whenever they're still working past an hour you'd like to sleep (especially when term papers/finals roll around, you'll probably be awake with them!). </p>
<p>At my school, roommates have to sign a contract on the first day of move-in which details how you will both handle events, such as sleep conflicts, SO's, telephone use, guests coming over, etc. I've found that most beneficial, as you get a chance to get a feel for your roommate's behavior and can identify sensitive situations (such as whether sleeping habits will become a BIG issue and spill over into other conflicts).</p>
<p>[I should note that now, three years later, my friend happily goes to sleep at 1 am (if she's lucky), even if a roommate is watching a movie less than 5 feet away - just with headphones and soft music. The roommate tries to accommodate her need for sleep by keeping extra noises and light usage to a mininum.]</p>
<p>I thought your Ill compromise, study in the library after 10 was quite good. My school has 11 as quiet hours but most people go to bed at 12 and wake up at 7 if they have an 8 class. My roommate stays up to 1 but I manage, I just turn off the lights and shut over the door. I lay my clothes out at night so I dont wake him searching in the dark (I keep the lights off in the morning too). Sometimes he keeps me up, but some mornings I have to get up at 4 am to go work, so it all works it way out.</p>
<p>Most likely your roommate won't have the same sleep schedule as you, but as some others have said, there are simple things you can do to adjust. If you're afraid that light and sound will bother you, you might want to teach yourself to go to sleep with a tv on (or lamp and radio) during the summer before you get to school. </p>
<p>I've always been the type who could sleep through almost anything, but when I first got to school the slamming of the stairwell door and slapping/clicking of shoes on the stairs (I live in a corner room right by the stairs) drove me absolutely crazy! I don't even notice it anymore, though.</p>
<p>Another thing with roommates, don't kid yourself and take their word for their habits if you talk to them in the summer before school. When I was talking to my roommate she said a bunch of stuff about how she loved animals, cleaning, was a home-body and studied all the time...yeah...she later said that she's not a pet person and animals annoy her, she's never once cleaned the common areas of our room, and she's almost never in the room (and regularly comes in at 3am or later) and I haven't seen her read a book for school more than a couple times the whole year. I'm not complaining (even though I'm sure it seems like I am) because she's a good roommate for the most part, just warning you that some people apparently suck at describing themselves to others.</p>
<p>I sleep earlier than my roommate and it works out pretty well (I usually go to bed around 12:00 or 1:00 and he'll stay up until at least 2:00 or 3:00). We turn the room light off, he keeps his lamp/computer on and puts on headphones so that music won't distract me. If I happen to go to bed later every now and then, I do the same. There's not much else to it.</p>
<p>at UCLA (which i presume would be similar to berkeley in this respect) there's a questionnaire with three options for bedtime: before 10, 10-midnite, and after midnite. i chose 10-midnite, but in reality, my other roommate and i are never in bed before 2. one of my roommates goes to bed by midnite regularly.
i'd suggest you say you go to bed a little earlier than you do, so you don't get roommates like me who SAY they go to bed by midnite, then don't... :rolleyes:
also, choose your bed depending on which one you can most easily separate yourself. in a triple, it's not so easy- the early sleeper has the bottom bunk 5 feet from my desk, where i'm always up typing. i try to keep my desk light from shining on her, and she'll fall asleep to her ipod. honestly, sometime's SHE is the one keeping us up- with her snoring! xD
but if you can take a bed furthest away from a late-sleeper's desk and or/TV, that would help. and earplugs are your new best friend. your roomie should be able to compromise by turning off the room light- i just use a flashlight if i need to get around. and my other late-sleeping roommate is often out of the room until she goes to bed.
truly the main problem our different schedules have produced is that they're both morning people, and i prefer to sleep in. so i get woken up early quite a bit. like i said, earplugs :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I share your preference for getting 10 hours of sleep per night. And actually, if I get less than 9 I'll be tired and yawning all day long. I started work at 10am every day over the summer before I started college, so I got used to going to bed at 11pm and getting up at 9am every single day, and since I had classes that started in the 9am-11am range, I proceeded to continue to go to bed at 11pm every night for the first few months. My roommate sort of got this exasperated "you're kidding" look on her face the first few times (she usually went to bed around 1am or so), but she also kept quiet and used her desk lamp instead of the overhead light. By the end of the year my sleep schedule shifted to going to sleep between midnight and 1am, which is what it still is now. Unless you're going to bed at 10pm specifically because you have to be up early every day, you'll probably end up going to bed later towards the end of the year as well.</p>
<p>On the roommate questionnaire there was a 'early bird' and a 'night owl' option under sleep times, but I considered myself neither so I didn't check either. Better to have actual times because those terms are subjective, but I didn't design them. You should be able to work out a compromise to keep relatively quiet and keep the main lights off when the other person is sleeping, unless your roommate is totally unreasonable or something. You could also look into singles if the idea of a single doesn't bother you...I know you can get them as a freshman at Penn, at least.</p>
<p>buy a sleep mask and ear plugs (or a white noise machine).
i'm sure if you explain it to your roommate, there won't be a problem. my roomie came in needing to sleep with her white noise machine on at night, and after about a week (that was a pretty awful week, though), I adjusted. It actually helps block out hall noise and I sleep better with it on.</p>
<p>Also- my friend at Cornell (freshman) managed to get a single.</p>
<p>Heres the deal. A lot of my friends came into college sure that they'd keep their sleep patterns. Most have not. One of my friend actually changed her sleeping pattern to match up better with her roommate, just because they had so much fun together. My roommate and I have a great arrangement because we both sleep really late and when one of us becomes tired, we both go to sleep. Otherwise, we usually pull all nighters the same amount of the time.</p>
<p>my sleeping pattern has not changed a bit since dorming. going to sleep around 3am or later. luckily my roommates also sleep late, although i sleep the latest. we're all pretty considerate though. we try not to make noise if someone is sleeping or we'll turn the light off, etc. i like it though. i'm a heavy sleeper so i can sleep with some noise and light. i just cover myself up with my sheets if some light ever bothers me.</p>