I’m having some issues with my new roommate(assigned over winter break). She says that if she’s getting up to go to an 8am I should have to wake up too, because “normal” sleeping hours are over. She wakes me up by generally being noisy. For example, blow drying her hair in the room, slamming doors, and facetiming her barking dog. She also has to sleep in Complete darkness. I can’t even have a one lightbulb lamp on to finish my homework without her getting upset. The frustrating part about this is that she is not willing to compromise at all, because she says I wake her up at night. She is an insanely light sleeper. I can’t tiptoe out of the room to brush my teeth without waking her up. I would go to the lounge to study until I can go to bed, but she rejected that too, because my getting into bed wakes her up. I don’t know what to do. I have talked to my RA and he basically thinks we should bw able to talk it out (I did schedule a mediation session, because it’s required before changing rooms) I’m very sleep deprived and frustrated at this point. Any advice would be much appreciated!
At least the message should get across at the mediation session. Whether or not your roommate will be able to work with you after that is yet to be seen.
Best thing to do until then is to go about your business as necessary. Be considerate, but don’t bend over backwards.
This.
How long until the mediation session?
Good luck at the mediation session. She needs a single room. She will have trouble being married or cohabitating.
You wake her up at night, she wakes you up in the morning. But it sounds like she is trying to be a bit tit for tat about it. She doesn’t get to schedule when you get up. So I would go into the mediation meeting with the things you are doing/going to do to try to accommodate her at night. Come in quietly, etc. It isn’t reasonable to go to bed because she is going to bed, but what will you do to try to accommodate her and disturb her as little as possible. And ask her what she can then do in the morning to do the same accommodation not disturb you and that you want to hear her recognize that you, not her sets your hours, within reason.It wouldn’t be reasonable for you to expect her to tip toe around all day, but limited to AM for her and PM for you. Now you are the reasonable one. However it just sounds like incompatible roommates in terms of hours.
This reminds me a lot of my roommate my first quarter. She would wake up at 6 every morning, turn on all the lights, blow dry her hair right by my head, and refused to ever close the window so I was always freezing, She ate all my food, never cleaned anything, and would always get upset if I stayed up later than her. Even my computer screen bothered her. We had bunk beds and I made an effort to block out any light since I was on the bottom bunk, always tried to be quiet, but nothing was ever good enough. The absolute worst part was when she would wake me up at like 2 in the morning, by accident of course, but she would get a little too frisky with her supposed to be ‘alone time’. Having attached bunk beds made this absolutely horrible…every. single. night. It’s not the exact same situation as yours, but I have to give you congrats on having the courage to speak up about it and talk to your RA. I was too scared of confrontation to bring anything up and really made things worse for myself. So at the meeting just try to be as honest as possible and see if the RA can help mediate, or possibly figure out a new living situation.
Thanks everyone for the good advice! Things have moved beyond waiting for the ca unfortunately. She’s decided that I can’t sleep if she doesn’t want me to. She’ll slam our door until I wake up. I have juvenile arthritis/fibromyalgia so I need a bit more sleep than average (10-11 hours a day not 23.5 or anything like that). I explained this to her when the issue first came up, but she doesn’t care. So, at this point I feel pretty awful. She said we both need to get up at 7, because she has an 8am class and won’t take no for an answer. I filed an incident report with the front desk. So, they are going to send someone to our room. Thanks everyone!
And just to be clear, when she says I am sleeping during the day too much. We’re talking about an occasional nap after being up really late working on a paper. Which I feel is pretty normal.
So, you’re going to bed at 8 or 9 pm for the 7 am “wake up time”?
@mziggy, have you checked whether your medical condition would allow special housing preference? some colleges take medical documentation into account when assigning rooms.
@JustOneDad I would got to bed that early just to get by for a week if I could, but I have a lot of demanding classes this semester with lots of homework.
@hippobirdy They do. I just haven’t had a problem with this before. My previous roommate and I got along great, but she dropped out during winter break. They would give me a single room in a traditional hall if I asked, but I do kind of want to stay in this room, because it’s one of the nicer dorms and I get along really well with my suitemates.
I had the opposite issue my freshman year. One of my roommates was a complete night owl while me and my other roommate were larks. On top of that, I had 8am classes for all three quarters that year, so of course I had to get up pretty early. My other roommate had either 8ams or 9ams every day for each quarter, so again she had to get up pretty early. Anyway, my night owl roommate would come in at around 2-3am on a weekday, turn the lights on, bring her friends in, and talk with them for a half hour or so while gradually getting ready to go to bed. She would do this at at least two nights per week during the week, and would do it pretty much every night on the weekends. If we tried to talk to her about it, she’d get mad at us and tell us that it’s her room too and she could do whatever she wanted. Oh, and then she’d start yelling at us when we were getting up for class because we were disturbing her sleep. She insisted that we should just skip class and sleep in because our schedule went against her schedule, and that we should just stay up until she goes to bed if we didn’t like her coming in so late. Me being a nervous freshman, I didn’t have the guts to go to the RA about it and try to mediate; I just kinda internally boiled. Now I admit that that was a stupid move on my part, and I commend you for taking action to mediate.
It’s completely ridiculous to try to control someone’s sleep schedule just because you’re roommates. And yes, taking a nap is normal, especially in that kind of circumstance. You’ll definitely need to get an RA involved ASAP if she’s really acting like that. In the meantime, is there anywhere else you could potentially go to sleep? A friend’s place, somewhere on campus, something? If she keeps it up despite talking to the RA, I would get out of there as soon as you can.
mziggy,
Is this the roommate who refuses to clean the bathroom (from your other thread) or the one who is on strike because of the one who won’t clean? Either way, maybe mediation could include that issue.