Getting Off on the Right Foot: Rules for Being a Great Roommate
By Don Rauf, Co-Editor, Student Health 101
"When you enter the real world, you will have to adapt to new experiences, and this begins with having a roommate." - Ben Wescott, student, Roanoke College
When Kristen Hunsinger, a junior at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, started her sophomore year, she moved in with a roommate whom she didn't know. "We didn't have the same friends, we didn't have the same classes, and we definitely didn't go to dinner together," says Hunsinger.
Hunsinger felt she would be better off living with someone she knew. So about three weeks into the school year, Hunsinger decided to move into a quad with a bunch or her friends. At first, things were "really awesome," but about three months in, one roommate/friend started to become a monster.
"She would slam the door, turn on lights, turn on the TV, and throw her book bag on me while I was sleeping," says Hunsinger. "She also proceeded to tell me that I would owe her money seeing as she lost her school ring in our room somewhere and blamed me. When moving into a living situation with someone who is your friend, know that you could end up not being friends anymore. It is better to live with someone that you don't know, than to live with someone who is your friend."
Spotting Roommate Troubles
Like many college students across the country, Hunsinger has had to deal with the anxiety of living with a problem roommate. According to a survey by Student Health 101, two out of three college students have had a difficult relationship with a roommate. Let's face it: Moving into tight quarters together with someone can be a challenge. In the survey, students' top five roommate problems are sloppiness, different sleeping habits, lack of communication, using stuff without asking, and general obnoxiousness. Some complained of finding a sock or Scrunchie on the doorknob to their room, indicating that they were being "sexiled" or kicked out of their own dorm so their roommate could have intimate relations.
Sloppiness, though, topped the roommate complaint list, and Jason Kuntz, director of residential life at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, says it's one of the main things his school tries to gauge in matching students as roommates. "Cleaning can be an issue," he says. "So, on our matching form, we ask students to say if they're very tidy, semi-tidy, or untidy. We ask them to be honest, not what they're aspiring to be. If you're a slob, we want you to mark that on the form so we can match you with a similar person. We don't want to put the very tidy with the untidy, or they'll kill each other."
Lebanon Valley and many other colleges and universities ask students to fill out a questionnaire to find out about their habits, attitudes, likes, and dislikes. The goal is to find good roommate matches. Forms may ask about musical tastes, sleep habits, interests, and hobbies. Schools want to know if students work best in morning, afternoon, or night. How do they feel about guests in the dorm room? How do they feel about sharing clothes, food, etc.? The questionnaire for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, part of Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, asks: "When do lights go out? Is there a set study time? How should messages be left, on notes, IM, or written on a board?"
Communicating about these issues helps students better understand their roommates and establish "ground rules" so relative harmony can be maintained. Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, uses roommate contracts to set up these ground rules. "The contract is a set of realistic guidelines for behavior that roommates agree on," says Kory Dodd, a spokesperson for Goucher. "It's not binding, but it helps set forth some realistic expectations."
Confronting Issues
In the Student Health 101 survey, communications ranks as one of the most important characteristics to having a successful relationship with a roommate, just below "being respectful of personal property," which ranked the highest.
"If people aren't talking, there are going to be problems," says Dan Pederson, assistant dean for residential life at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. Many resident advisors say that it's best to confront issues head on and not let bad feelings fester. If you don't address roommate problems, you can experience severe stress and that in turn can affect your grades. Getting problems out in the open is the only way to move forward to a better living situation.
However, having a one-to-one conversation about a problem can be very difficult. Pederson suggests that if you're too shy for a personal showdown, then write out your issues in an assertive, but non-threatening manner. You can also get an RA (resident advisor) or CA (community assistant) involved to help arrange an official meeting where you and your roommate can express your problems. Sometimes, it's easier to discuss matters in an official meeting, and an RA's mediation can keep things from getting out of hand.
Keep an Open Mind
For every roommate horror story you hear, there are several more success stories. Almost half of the respondents to a Student Health 101 survey say they had a roommate whom they thought they might not get along with at first, but wound up getting along just fine.
"When you enter the real world, you will have to adapt to new experiences, and this [ability to adapt] begins with having a roommate," says Ben Wescott, a senior at Roanoke College in Lynchburg, Virginia. "Having a roommate you don't know is a blast."
Sarah Whelehon, a recent college graduate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, agrees that having a roommate-or two or three-can be one of the best experiences college has to offer."I attended Truman State University, which is a fairly small liberal arts college in Kirksville, Missouri, and I wanted a randomly assigned roommate," says Whelehon. "I got one from Iowa, and I got two randomly assigned suitemates; our rooms were connected by a bathroom. By some stroke of luck or fate, we all became an inseparable group of best friends, despite our very different personalities. We would borrow each other's clothes, do each other's hair for formal events, have movie parties, etc, and we formed a very strong bond. I guess I just believe it was pure luck, but the stars aligned and I have met my very best friends."
So as you begin a new year with a potentially new roommate, try to stay open-minded and communicate. You could be making a lifelong friend.
Don Rauf is the co-editor of Student Health 101.
Author Video: Don Rauf, Co-Editor of Student Health 101
"Hi everyone, I am Don Rauf and writing this story about roommates got me thinking about my own roommate situation. I lived with four other guys in a two room suite at NYU and I have to say that living in such close quarters posed some challenges. One of the biggest challenges was just keeping the bathroom clean. We all shared one bathroom. But we did come up with a schedule and we each took turns and that worked fairly well except for one guy who thought cleaning the bathroom meant throwing his dirty sneakers into a tub full of hot water and soaking them. He soon moved out and we all got along fairly well because we respected each other’s space and communicated well. In fact, one of those roommates is still one of my best friends to this day."
Student Video: Dana Krauss, University of Wisconsin
"Hi, my name is Dana Krauss and I am a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Roommate problems can add a lot of stress to your life and they are a common issue for many college students. One summer, I was living with three other people and things were going fine until one of our roommates, we’ll call him Matt, started bring friends over and smoking in our living room almost everyday. What Matt wants to put in his body is his own choice, but before moving in it had been agreed upon that the apartment was going to be smoke-free. One of the other roommates and I got together and decided to calmly approach Matt to try and work things out. This definitely wasn’t something we wanted to do. The thought of us having to talk to Matt made us both cringe, but if we didn’t talk to him, nothing was going to change. It took two attempts, the first time Matt became very angry and defensive and he shut us out, but about a week or two later, Matt got over himself, we were able to talk a second time and reach a compromise. The compromise was that Matt could smoke but he had to do it in his room with the door closed. This was something that we could both live with since there were only about two months left of the lease. There were a lot of things I could have done in retaliation to Matt’s behavior. I could have trashed his room, I could have thrown out his frozen pizzas, I could have accidently broken his hookah, but that would have been really immature and it wouldn’t have solved anything. So instead, I remained clam and opened a compromise and eventually we were able to talk things out, solve the situation and we are on good terms, even to this day."
Student Video: Cathy Liu, University of California-Berkeley
"Hey guys, I’m Cathy and I’m a sophomore at UC Berkeley. Today I’m going to talk to you about living with roommates. I have a lot of experience as I’ve lived in the residence halls for two years. And I think there are a lot of things I’ve learned from it, but I’m going to talk about the key things that I’ve learned. One of them is that a roommate is not obligated to become your best buddy or your best friend and that they are people who live with you. I feel like some people get carried away with the idea of what a roommate is and this causes problems sometimes. Another thing is to always tell your roommate when something is bothering you. In the beginning for me, I thought it was kind of rude, but at the end you kind of, you realize that it’s for the best because if you let the little things slide you eventually bottle it up and one day you could explode and scream at your roommate and one day a big fight could start. Another one is to set rules in the beginning. I find this especially helpful because you don’t know the person and it helps you to get to know them better because you get to learn what they like, what they don’t like, what are their pet peeves. And I would also say bonding time with them is a must. I’ve felt like I’ve known my roommates for about a few months and right now I would say that we’re really close because we have a lot of bonding time, we have dinners together. And most importantly, never assume that you know something about them, especially since you’ve only met them for less than a year and that everyone does things differently and has different views and that it’s something you come to terms with when you live with a roommate. Yeah that’s it."
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