College 101
How to deal with (and not be) a horror-story roommate
It's Bert and Ernie, not Bert and Hannibal Lecter
Unless you're a character on a '70s sitcom, no one wants to share a room with anyone. If you do happen to be a '70s sitcom character, you can probably skip this article. We won't be covering how ridiculous you look with your giant feathered hair. The problem is, if you're going to college, you're probably sharing a room with someone.
Why? The short answer is money. Living alone is super expensive, and what with college costs rising every year and showing no signs of slowing down, you're going to want to save money anywhere you can. That means a roommate.
Besides, single rooms are in limited supply. At a lot of schools, you're not getting within sniffing distance of a single until junior year at least. The other option is living off campus, but in that case, you're contending with the local housing market. You'll also probably need a vehicle to get to and from school, which also needs maintenance. Have you seen gas prices? Yeesh.
So that means the vast majority of you will be sleeping roughly ten feet away from a complete stranger who probably is not an axe murderer. Here's the important thing to remember: that person is thinking the exact same thing about you. It's your first time away from home and living with someone, it's his/her first time away from home and living with something. You've already got so much in common.
If you want a happy year living with this individual, who—we cannot emphasize this enough—is probably not an axe murderer, your best bet is to be the kind of person you would want to live with. This makes the roommate think, "Hey, maybe I should be nice, too." Sure, you're exploiting the social contract for your personal gain, but isn't that what the social contract is there for? Oh, fine, it's there to keep us from falling into an anarchy of rudeness, too.
Let's start with the good stuff. Most roommates these days are selected by computer algorithm. Like dating sites. This starts with a questionnaire designed to weed out obvious personality conflicts. Do you smoke? Do you yodel? Are you a werewolf? You know, the basics. Then they try to match up the most compatible people. Over at Brown, they have a 70% success rate, with almost half of the respondents being "very satisfied" with their roommates (source).
After frosh year, you will likely be in charge of picking your own roommate—or, as it's known: terrible, terrible freedom. In this case, it's on you to determine how compatible you are with the other person. Imagine your friends are muppets. While it's tempting to room with Animal because he's awesome, do you really want to be kept up every night by his incessant drumming and broken English and rampaging? While Sam the Eagle might be a little boring socially, he's a pretty quiet guy and probably won't lower your GPA with his crazy partying. Look at a prospective roommate not as a friend, but as someone you will be sleeping nearby. The criteria are very different.
So you have a roommate. What now? The first thing to remember is that this is like a marriage when everyone involved would rather be single. Try to imagine that you're a Hapsburg and you've been sent off to marry a Medici. Actually, unless you're a history major, don't imagine that at all. Go with a werewolf and a vampire. Whatever. The point is that what's the number one rule of marriage?
Communication (source, source). That's the number-one thing. This is a relationship, and fundamentally, if you want to know how someone else is feeling, ask them. Keep the lines open and be willing to hear what the other person has to say. Maybe you snore. Maybe you have stinky feet and your mom never mentioned it.
You're not going to want to hear this, but with great freedom comes great responsibility. You won't have your parents reminding you to do your homework anymore. And believe us, there will be a lot of homework in college. We're talking three hours of it for every hour you're in class (source). You're going to need quiet time to finish it, and your roommate will as well. Schedule that in advance so you know when it's cool to cut loose. Or maybe just live in the library. Either one.
Their stuff is their stuff and your stuff is your stuff. When you lived alone or with a sibling, chances are you could more or less use whatever was in your room. Not so now. Half of your room belongs to someone else, and there's no quicker way to start a fight than to borrow something without asking. Treat their things with respect.
If you get a ride off campus from your roomie (or anyone else), offer to pay for gas. Trust us, it goes a long way, and we aren't even working for Immortan Joe. That goes for nearly anything. If you're getting a favor from someone, get them a little something. You'd be amazed at how far a simple sandwich will go.
More to the point, respect the other person. Their stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, which is a good metaphor as long as you remember Titanic. Someone had to have taught you the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Actually, the right way would be "Do unto others as they would have you do." And we're back into communication.
The point of all of this is to remember that your roommate is a person in the exact same situation you're in. Think about how annoyed you would be if the other person woke you up every morning with a loud alarm, or by throwing an angry badger at you. That likely would annoy them, too, so no matter how good a deal you got on badgers down at Costco, don't do it. This applies to everything. Think about how your actions impact the other person before you do them. That's the core of being a good roomie.
You're going to have to live in close quarters with someone and in the best-case scenario, no one kills each other. Well, in the best-case scenario, the two of you become lifelong friends who eventually unite to fight evil. We're not telling you to shoot for that. Just remember how you would like to be treated, and if you don't know, ask. It's just that easy.