One of the hardest things for college students is having to live with another person. Having a roommate means living and sharing everyday life with a person you could know nothing about.
You could have to spend a year with a person you can’t get along with.
Despite this, I think learning to live with a roommate is one of the best experiences college can offer. Being from a different country, Italy, I was unfamiliar with the American idea of a college campus where people live together.
I found the idea of living with another person on campus very exciting. Sharing a room with another person is often the best option for freshmen and international students who want to socialize and make new friends. It’s especially nice when you are far from home and you can find comfort with your college roommate. Having someone nearby to talk to can help with homesickness.
“Living in a double dorm is definitely cheaper than living in a single dorm, plus you get to meet new people,” said Natalie Messerich, a freshman living in Grand Mesa Hall. “When you meet new roommates, it’s like they all come from a different background, with different personalities and everything. So it is like you learn their culture, the way they have grown up and lived. So you get to see how different people work and stuff like that.”
Beside the social and cultural richness of this experience, many students prefer living in a single room and avoiding the problem of finding themselves with a person they don’t like. Students who do this usually have already lived with roommates in their first year of college and now they need their own space and privacy.
Living with another person comes with a lot of responsibilities. First of all, there is a loss of total freedom. Everything you want to do can now be disturbing to the other person. When I talked to two other two students living in Grand Mesa Hall, Adrianna Garcia and Madilyn Slocomb, they explained how it is common to have bad experiences with roommates.
They mentioned how many people struggle to get along with their roomate. In this case, the best thing to do is try to talk with the person. Let them understand how it is important for the both of you to have a good relationship, at least until the end of the year. It is also possible to ask for a room change, but this process can be very complicated and means you have to move all your belonging from one place to another.
Dealing with roommates can be hard and it can create many complications, but it also remains one of the best experiences of college life.
