Hi. So I was filling in a housing questionnaire for college and I was wondering if any of you guys could share with me some important things I should include in a description of my ideal roommate. Is it better to have a party person of a non-party person? Similar to me or not? Any tips would help. Also personal stories of what you wish you could have asked for in a roommate. Any help appreciated!
You want one who is compatible with you…who keeps their stuff mostly picked up, doesn’t stay up too late, is reasonable about having guests over and letting you have guests over, who doesn’t have illegal drugs in the room, who adheres to quiet time, who doesn’t take your stuff.
Over the years, I have had wonderful friends who were lousy roommates. I’ve had great roommates who were not particularly close friends. You want to live with someone who will use your common space in a similar way. If you have the same views around cleanliness, noise, and schedule, that’s a great start to having a good living arrangement. Drug and alcohol use is an issue for some. You don’t have to be similar in every respect, but a slob and a neat freak, or a morning person and a night owl are likely to have frictions that will make you both miserable.
Respectful is most important I think. Compatible for neatness and quiet hours is second.
Areas of potential conflict:
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neatness/cleanliness: a piggy person rooming with a normal/neat freak will be a recipe for resentment. You have no idea the levels of filth people are willing to live in. D lived with someone who let the trash pile up beyond belief, piles of clothes on the floor blocking access to the closet, and empty junk food wrappers IN HER BED. When someone describes themselves as “messy”, believe them.
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schedules: if one person is an 8:00am class person and the other doesn’t roll out of bed until noon, you will have the early bird being disturbed by the night owl up at 2:00am, and the night owl being woken in the morning. This doesn’t have to be a deal breaker if each of you is respectful (early bird keeping quiet in the morning, having a rule at night to vacate the room if you’re up past a certain hour so the early bird can sleep).
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extracurricular activities: smoker vs. non-smoker, drug user vs. non-drug user, drinker vs. non-drinker. Trust me: you say you’ll be cool with it now, but you won’t if your roomie is considerably more or less involved in some or all of this than you. Stories on CC of people sleeping in libraries to avoid the drug use going on in their own rooms.
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course load/major: yes, being a pre-med or STEM major is a tough pill to swallow when you’re liberal arts roomie seemingly has the time and bandwidth to watch endless hours of Netflix while you are slaving away in libraries and lounges. This seems kind of minor, but, when combined with other negatives, this will take on weight of EPIC proportions.
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“guests”: anyone staying the night (or hooking up) in your room, be they boys, girls, friends, family members. If the two of you have similar needs, this probably won’t be much of an issue. If it’s very one-sided, it will. No one wants to feel like a constant stranger in a room for which they are paying 1/2 the cost.
All of these issues can be mitigated by mutual respect, which, unfortunately, is not usually a checkbox on a housing form. You should therefore plan to formulate some rules for how you are going to peacefully cohabitate. Some schools/dorms require roomies to draw up an agreement amongst them so that everyone can live in relative harmony.
My ideal roommate was a person I liked a lot but we weren’t great friends. I think being too friendly can soemtimes mess things up. You start to get on each others nerves.
For me, I would want somone with a similar sleep schedule. If yiu area night owl, and he is an early bird, that’s going to get old really soon. Close on the heels is noise. Whatever the questionnaire ask, priroritize what is important to you. If you are going to be driven nuts by a slob, say so. Isolate what you think will be unbearable, and emphasize it on the form, but not by sounding like an ogre.
My D just finished her first year in a forced triple (school said it wasn’t forced but it clearly was IMO). The 3 of them were not good friends outside of the room but had NO conflicts all year. They were very respectful of one another. They talked at beginning of the year and set rules like if someone was studying, others would leave room if they got a phone call. If someone was going to be up studying past a certain time, they would study outside the room. They were helpful and kind to one another- if one was sick, the others would bring them soup or tea. My D had a stomach bug at the end of the semester. She threw up in the middle of the night all over her bedding. She had to put it in the wash and her roommate put a clean set of sheets on her bed.
So I would say that being respectful is the most important thing.
One word: Mom
TRANSPARENCY. You want someone that isn’t passive aggressive and is honest to you about their standards (and likewise, you should be the same). Clear communication is key.
There is no perfect roommate boy.
Everybody has upsides and downsides.
You just want to live with someone as compatible as you are.
This is all going to be based on personal preference. If you’re a messy person, for example, having someone who always picks up after themselves and is neat and clean may not be your ideal - you may end up annoying each other constantly. (Guilty as charged. I am not a slob but I am messy, and I’ve had at least one much neater roommate - it was the one thing we constantly disagreed about.)
Same thing with the partier/non-partier thing. I don’t think it matters that much as long as your roommate is respectful. I’ve had some roommates who were far more involved in the social scene than I was; what made the difference in irritation level was not how much of a partier they were but how much they tried to annoy me about going out more. Same thing about drugs - where you’ll have problems is not how much they use (within reason) but whether or not they are respectful of the rules you both agree to about whether they can use them in the house, particularly anything that needs to be smoked. (Cigarette smoking, I think, is the one exception: one, because even a person who never smokes in your apartment is going to bring the smell in on their clothes and body; and two, because I’ve yet to meet a person who promises never to smoke in the apartment and then actually doesn’t.)
If you’re spending a lot of time monitoring whether your roommate is studying vs. watching Netflix or whatnot, you’re the one being the annoying roommate. Also, it’s an old canard that STEM majors work harder than “liberal arts” majors (by which I think people mean social science and humanities majors, because most science majors are also liberal arts majors). Don’t assume that your major is harder or more time-consuming than other people’s - this is irritating and condescending - and don’t be annoying about other people’s leisure time. The important part is that you work out boundaries for studying and entertainment time, but to be frank, IMO rooms are better suited for entertainment, lounging and sleeping than studying. If you need an intense session and your roommate is watching Netflix, go to the library!
I’ve been blessed to have great roommates - I’m still friends with all of my college and graduate school roommates. Some of them I became closer to than others, but with all of them I hung out with them outside of the room (just not too much).
This was very helpful. Thank you all for your answers!!