<p>I was surprised to find that my freshman daughter has been placed in a triple. The other two roommate students appear to be friends who are rooming together. I am concerned because we requested a single or a double and she got a triple and she will be rooming with two freshman who are friends and who have probably never roomed together. The room is quite small and they have been told already that they are not allowed to move any furniture as the housing office has found the best solution to the shortage of space.</p>
<p>My daughter purposely did not ask to be placed with her own best friend as her roommate because she wanted to maintain a good friendship with her bf plus my DD wanted to live with someone who was not familiar to her..</p>
<p>I'm concerned that DD will be the 3rd wheel in her room and may have to referee between the 2 friends if there are issues. I've always noticed concerns when there are 3 female roommates and I really don't like the situation. DD says she will try the situation because she doesn't feel like she has a choice.</p>
<p>Any recommendations on how to maintain a cordial living arrangement?</p>
<p>First, she should stay far away from any problems between the other two. She’s not called upon to referee and attempting to do so is only going to cause problems for her.</p>
<p>I think the best approach would be to be friendly and considerate, but not to try to become part of the established relationship. She’ll have plenty of opportunities elsewhere on campus to find close friends without the potential messiness.</p>
<p>A freshman getting a triple (whether they want it or not) isn’t unusual and is increasingly common. Being considerate and polite to the roomies (and they to her) is the key. The roomies don’t all need to be best friends - just respectful and cordial.</p>
<p>There’ll be a different dynamic since her roomies are already friends. That may work for them or against them. I hope it doesn’t cause your D any issues. It’s not your D to referee anything. </p>
<p>Your D may very well become friends with both or on or the other of these girls. Hopefully your D will be open to that and they’ll be open to it as well. People don’t generally only have a single friend to the exclusion of everyone else so there’s no reason they can’t all be friends if it works out that way. if it doesn’t work out that way then it’s a matter of being polite and respectful to each other.</p>
<p>My D was placed in a triple in a dorm that was all forced triples at UCD a couple of years ago. She ended up getting along with one roommate better than the other and ended up living with the same girl and a bunch of others from her dorm floor in an apartment the following year. There are so many kids per floor, that I wouldn’t anticipate it being a problem for your daughter to make friends beyond her roommates if things don’t exactly work out them.</p>
<p>Probably the best way to help her maintain a cordial living arrangement is to show her a positive attitude and applaud her for trying and putting her best foot forward.
If we make a big deal out of things before there is trouble, we sometimes court trouble.
It sounds like your daughter wants to make the best of things and deal with it. Good for her. You should be proud of her attitude and not make her feel she is somehow disadvantaged.</p>
<p>Davis is a wonderful college community. She’s going to love it.</p>
<p>I’m sure that your D will eventually get over the fact that she was placed in a triple when she didn’t request it. Obviously they must have an overcrowding problem at UC Davis. My D shared a suite with three other girls last year. For the most part, everyone got along with each other. None of them were best friends before they moved in. There were a handful of instances when there were some disagreements and drama, but overall everything turned out fine. They are all actually rooming with completely different people this year. My D’s new roommate seems to be very considerate and sweet.</p>
<p>This will be a good experience for your D. She should try to be accommodating and cordial with her roommates. If she’s like my D, she will make other friends who live on her hall or in another dorm. At the beginning of their freshman year, everything seems to be very intense and little things can get blown out of proportion. As time goes by, things will settle down. I’m sure it will all work out for her.</p>
<p>So it’s been a month and my dd feels extremely uncomfortable in the room. She feels uncomfortable walking into the room as she doesn’t feel welcome. The girls are her opposites: they are hell bent on inviting boys into the room and are non-stop talkers during quiet hours. </p>
<p>DD said she has nothing in common with them other than the fact that they share a room. She’s not into making chit-chat but has tried to carry on a conversation, but always ends up being quieted. We don’t know what to suggest other than: “try to make it work”. She really wants to move out of the room, but we don’t know if another room will make it worse.</p>
<p>Sorry, it’s been a month since the last post but a week since the move-in, it just feels like a month, and dd wants to make it work, but she is avoiding the two roommates like the plague. She’s not happy about all of the guests from the local community in the room.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you worry that another room would make it worse. Do you mean you think she’d find the same issues with other room mates?</p>
<p>And she wants to make it work but she’s avoiding the two room mates like the plague–doesn’t really make sense. </p>
<p>It sounds to me like you’re getting some mixed messages from her. Does she have other friends she hangs out with? Not everyone in college is best friends with their first year room mates. The good news is that next year she will have a choice of whom to room with, so the friends she makes now can be her mates next year and the following years. Tell her to work hard, make some friends in her classes and realize that the room mate situation is temporary. The connections she makes in her courses and in her outside activities will be much more important, and will probably be friends she has for life.</p>
<p>many colleges have housing squeezes at the beginning of the year.
it should lighten up as some upperclassmen move off campus.
some schools that my Ds friends & cousins have attended have had students camping out in the common room, bunking at a profs house, or living in a room wirh two others that was designed for two.</p>
<p>not to say it is easy. my oldest had a single in college ( without requesting it!)Senior year she lived in a collehe townhouse with a young man who is still one of her best friends. They both gave each other lots of space.
My youngest also finds being around a lot of people takes energy. Freshman year she had a roommate that she chose from the university bulletin boards,but the next year she moved off campus so she could have her own room.
Perhaps your daughter could work out a schedule with her roommates so that there would at least be a few times when she could look forward to relative privacy.
even if it isnt as much as she wants, maybe knowing it is there at all will make the rest easier to manage.</p>
<p>My daughter ended up in a triple her freshman year. She was nervous and worried about it before moving in. She made an immediate connection with one girl. Now that she has graduated and is working in her college town she is still close friends with one of those roommates, the one she also roomed with sophomore year, the one she did not bond with at first. </p>
<p>You can’t know how things are going to work out this early freshman year.</p>
<p>First, she should stay far away from any problems between the other two. She’s not called upon to referee and attempting to do so is only going to cause problems for her.</p>
<p>Absolutely. </p>
<p>Your D should really try to spend as little time as possible in that cramped situation anyway. Encourage her to find some nice little study nook somewhere…in a library, in the corner of the campus Starbucks, wherever.</p>
<p>and, if the 2 friends have issues, let those be their issues…don’t get involved.</p>
<p>Frankly, people forget that college kids’ schedules are very different than high school. I’s possible tha tthe 3 girls schedules will be so different that the only time they’ll be together is night time.</p>
<p>The UCs are getting famous for their Triples.</p>
<p>DD is busy with classes and other friends/activities on campus and stays away from the room. She’s had fun getting to ride around the community on her bike. So when she returns to the room, she absolutely dreads it because she doesn’t know who she’ll find in her room-males/females, etc sitting at her desk, going through her things. We told her to be patient and wait another week and see if things settle down.</p>
<p>Her room is at the end of the COED hall and every other room in the vicinity is surrounded my 6 loud male student rooms. There are 80 residents on her floor. The other girls rooms are at the end of the hall. The quiet floor is one floor down. If she moves to another room, she may get stuck in another triple, which is what she really doesn’t want.</p>
<p>At UCD my d had a dorm roommate that was not her " type". She knew right away there was not going to be a best friend situation…so she spent most of her time out in the lounge. She met many many friends their that were just perfect for her.
Maybe if your d hangs out there, she too can meet some people more her style. The ever popular advice to join a club or sorority ( I know rush is going on right now so probably too late for that) might help too.
Also…talk to the RA. No one should be going through her stuff. Give it a few weeks…you could check into changing rooms, it does happen. But I think once she makes some friends this should make the problem less intense.
Good luck.</p>
The sitting at her desk shouldn’t be a problem - she just needs to tell the person to move because she needs to use it now. If your D isn’t using it then there s/b no issue with someone else using the chair - there aren’t a lot of places for visitors to sit in a triple.</p>
<p>No one s/b ‘going through her things’. Who’s doing that? If it’s the roomies she needs to ask why they’re doing it and tell them to stop. If it’s a visitor of the roomies then she needs to tell the roomies to not allow their guests to go through her things and she’ll return the favor to them when she has guests. It’s common courtesy. I can’t imagine why someone else would be going through her things other than to steal or snoop - neither of which is proper.</p>
<p>She’s only a week into it now and things have a chance of settling out somewhat as people get involved in the grind of schoolwork (hopefully the roomies don’t have easy majors or light schedules). If it doesn’t improve, or if your D simply can’t stand it, then she can see if she can arrange a roomie swap with another room and hope she doesn’t jump out of the frying pan into the fire. Above all, make sure your D speaks up for herself but maintains a respectful stance. She also needs to come up with other mitigations such as finding other places to study, establishing an agreeable no guest time so she can sleep, finding other activities to occupy her (maybe even an on-campus job), maybe other classmates she can study with in that person’s dorm room, etc.</p>
<p>I assume not doing a triple might not be an option.</p>