I’m a freshman this year, and I’m staying in the dorms with a random roommate. We get along ok and everything, but our different sleep schedules is really irritating me. She goes to bed at 2 am at the very earliest every night, and I go to bed at 12:30 at the latest. We both need to leave at the same time for our early class every day, and she rolls out of bed 5-10 minutes before she has to leave, so I have to get ready in the dark every morning and try not to wake her up. Sometimes I have to wake her up so that she actually goes to class. On weekends it is MUCH worse. She’ll come back into the dorms at 3-4 a.m. and sleep until 2 or later in the afternoon, so I can’t actually do anything in the dorm because light will wake her up. Today, I woke up at 6:30 to go to work at 7, and she was still in bed when I got back to the dorm at 2:25.
I’ve been very lucky to have had my own room for a very long time; but I don’t know if I can continue to kindly take her extreme sleep schedule. Rooming is supposed to be a game of give-and-take. She’s been a big inconvenience to my life, and I’m sure that I’ve been one to her lifestyle as well, given I try to go to bed before midnight. We’ve had other issues, but this is really the big one.
I guess my questions are: how far to the edge do you have to be pushed in order to request a roommate switch, and at what point are you considered lazy instead of just a “night owl”?
You’re not considered lazy just because you go to bed late (coming from a relative early bird). Get that out of your head right now. That’s rude and so unnecessarily judgmental. Are you lazy because you go to bed early?? No?
Have you actually tried anything to rectify the situation? Maybe you can leave a small desk lamp on for her to turn off when she comes in, so the room is darker than normal for your sleep. If she’s loud when she comes in, maybe you can talk to her about it. Maybe you can get ear plugs and a sleep mask.
1.) Your dog is absolutely adorable.
2.) I’m sorry, my commentary on her going to bed late was miscommunicated and rude. I meant that she considers herself a “night owl” because she prefers to stay up very late, but I consider her to be lazy because she may go to bed very late, but she stays in bed, either sleeping, hovering between sleep and consciousness, or looking at her phone until late into the afternoon, far beyond the typical 8 hours of sleep a typical person acquires. The comment doesn’t make much sense and was made out of spite.
During our first conversation in the summer, she suggested that I was going to be a problem for her and asked me if we should switch roommates. Thinking she wasn’t seriously going to go to bed 2-3 a.m. for 8 am class, I didn’t believe that it would be an issue. Now I’m having second thoughts.
I just don’t want to burden her by asking her to change her lifestyle, but at the same time, it’s been causing a problem for me because she’s often drunk when she comes in late on the weekends with friends when I need to wake up early for work.
Thank you! This is actually my favorite dog at the animal shelter where I volunteer. If only I didn't live in a dorm... :)
That does sound pretty annoying. My (longest-lasting, as I had several) roommate last year seemed to need much less sleep than I do. I would, personally, try the self-insulating measures first (sleep mask, earplugs), not worry about waking her up if it's the afternoon, and possibly look into your school's policies for switching roommates in between semesters. If you really and truly can't figure out how to coexist, then you're right, it might be better for everyone if you switched sooner.
My roommate and I have very different sleep schedules as well. I go to bed at 12 or maybe 1 in the morning, and she goes to bed at 2 or 3. She also plays on her phone and has to have the TV on (with the sound low), lol. In my case though it doesn’t bother me because it’s easy for me to fall asleep and I’m a heavy sleeper. I guess for you, you might want to switch it up now before it becomes too hard to find a replacement. I mean, she did tell you that your rooming situation was going to be a problem and tried to switch so you can’t really be mad.
As for the light situation, I get up before my roommate and I always turn the light on because she really can’t expect me to get ready in the dark. She hasn’t had an issue with it. Also, it’s insane to keep the light off at 2 in the afternoon just because someone is asleep. She can sleep with the light on if she’s really that tired.
I was going to make similar recommendations as Raynic781. You can use a mask and earplugs (we sent these with our daughter who has three roommates in one room), and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask her to use headphones for her phone or TV when you are sleeping. As for things like alarm clocks and lights, your roommate needs to bend too. If you need a light on when you get dressed turn a small desk lamp on. Don’t worry about waking her up for class, that is her responsibility. You have to coexist. If you can’t live that way, then by all means explore changing roommates.
I’m a little confused. Did your roommate tell/ask you not to turn the light on when she’s sleeping? Or is that something you’re doing out of a sense of courtesy?
@Snax03 You don’t need to be pushed so close to or over the edge in order to put in for a room change. The sooner you request a room change, the better for you. Many college students change rooms for various reasons, and the housing office has procedures in place to effectuate such changes. You may be put on a waitlist initially, depending on room availabilty, but eventually i think the housing office will be able to accomodate you. Don’t worry about offending your roommate, just chalk it up to different sleep schedules, nothing personal.
If you’ve had a room to yourself most of your life, then this is actually a great opportunity for you to learn and grow in intimate living/roommate relationships. For example, my two sons shared a room all throughout high school. One son had to be at a 7 am class so he was often in bed by 9 or 9:30 pm. The other was a night owl and went to bed around midnight. They learned how to make it work. I felt like all of the roommate relationships and the resulting conflicts (and there will always be some) that I learned to work through was great experience for my lifelong roommate (my husband). Even now, he gets up earlier than I do on weekdays and turns on a light. If I wake up, I just pull on my eye mask.
I think that it’s fine to let your roommate know that you’ll be turning on a small light in the mornings from now on. And during the weekends, I think that it’s ok to not try too hard to be quiet after mid-morning.
But if you haven’t already discussed it, then you definitely should. Hopefully she’s been also trying to compromise and talking about it might help you to see that. Another example, in college, my roommate smoked – and I absolutely detest smoke. But I realized that she was really going way out of her to try and accommodate me – she always opened the window when she smoked. Sometimes she would leave the room to smoke elsewhere if I walked into the room and she was already smoking. So while it still bothered me greatly all year long, it definitely helped me to know that she was trying very hard to be considerate of me also. So discuss the issue together and try to find ways to compromise with each other.
Thanks for all of the advice and opinions, everyone! Thanks for also being understanding; college has been an adjustment to say the least, and the littlest things that have changed that I once had control over are really bothering me.
I’ve solved the getting ready in the dark situation. This morning, after showering and changing really quickly in the room with my phone light, I threw my toothbrush, hairbrush, blowdryer, and makeup in a reusable bag and finished getting ready. I still had to wake up my roommate so that she would make it to class on time, but it was definitely an improvement.
Out of courtesy, I really try not to turn on a light because she sleeps with her head very close to my lamp, which may seem like a poor decision, but if she sleeps the other way, it’s impossible for the light from the hallway not to hit her face when I open the door to go to the shower in the morning.
I think things will get better, but we may need to verbally communicate about this whole sleep schedule thing. The weekends will be an especially big struggle is she’s waking me up at 4 am because of a party and I’m waking her up at 6:30 am because of work.
Having a relationship with anyone (roommate, friend, colleague, significant other) means you have to try communicating it with them when there’s a problem. You can’t assume that other people can read your mind, and you can’t just quietly stew waiting for other people to change.
If you try talking about it (and it might take a couple tries because habits are hard to change) and nothing comes of it, then you can look into other options, like getting the RA involved. But using your words is generally always the first step.
Bring it up with her and see if you both can come up with ideas that work for everyone. Both of you can try eye masks and earplugs. If you have a lamp, you can try to move it so that it shines away from her (towards your side of the room) rather than into her eyes. If your lamp doesn’t adjust, you could probably get a cheap one from Target or Walmart that does. You can set up hours during the day when it’s okay to use lights and move about in the room normally. You can go to the library or somewhere else if you want to do something while she’s sleeping. There are lots of things you can both try to figure out solutions for this, but the first step is that you have to talk to her and actually try something. Jumping automatically to getting a new roommate might not actually solve anything. You have no idea what that new roommate will be like, and you will likely have to learn to communicate to her as well. Might as well start now.
Good on you for trying to compromise, OP! Your roommate is lucky to live with someone who is so considerate of her feelings while still having boundaries.
