College Roommate Roulette (Part 1)
Or, How I Grew Up And Learned To Live By Myself
I never had a roommate — a real, actual roommate — until college began. Nor had I ever spent more than a single night away from my parents — no overnight camps, summer retreats, high school senior trips, nothing. Sure, my brother and I shared a room for a few years as kids (when we lived in California, no less), but that doesn’t really count, since we weren’t responsible for anything beyond making sure our room was clean. My parents took care of the rest — anything and everything was provided for in exchange for a promise to study hard and earn good grades.
This meant that, as college approached, I was faced with the prospect of living away from home for the first time, in an environment I’d never been in before, with roommates I might or might not get along well with. What could go wrong? Well, as it turns out, a lot of stuff didn’t go the way I expected it to, but not in the way that you might think.
My first semester at college began the week after I graduated high school. At the behest of my parents, I had enrolled myself in LEAP (Learning Edge Academic Program) for the summer, a program meant to provide me with a head start of sorts in college. LEAP had different “prides” (a play on our school’s Nittany Lion mascot) dedicated to specific subjects that incoming freshmen would enroll in, spending a summer taking two classes and getting acquainted with college life and Penn State’s campus overall. To nobody’s surprise, I enrolled in the Computer Science pride, taking CMPSC 121 (the basic level programming class) and CAS 100 (a public speaking gen-ed) over the summer.
For some reason or another, Penn State didn’t assign roommates by pride, which would have been nice — being able to live with someone who has the same interests as you, as well as the same classes as you, is an easy way to get to know them, after all. No, on the contrary, I was assigned three random roommates, none of which shared a major or even many common interests with me; I had drawn the short end of the “roommates you can become best friends with” stick for sure.
The three people I would spend the summer with were Owen (a stereotypical jock I would rarely see), Colton (a really nice dude who had a passion for English and History) and Brandon (an overly friendly and genial dude who definitely ended up annoying me sometimes). We were assigned to live in Simmons Hall in South, a stereotypical name for a stereotypical residence hall. Our room was a four-person supplemental room (converted from a lounge in order to expand capacity) with a small kitchenette and walk in closet, which was nicer than most double rooms on campus, despite the increased amount of roommates.
Summer session at Penn State, overall, consisted of three kinds of people: freshmen who got accepted in the summer in order to catch up on classes they were behind on, overachieving freshmen who chose to enroll in LEAP to get ahead, and upperclassmen who wanted to take more classes to get ahead or because they wanted to stick around town. I believe, at least, that all of them were also enrolled in LEAP, but in different prides than me — I never really asked. I didn’t think any of my roommates were the type to be behind on their studies, though I definitely didn’t see enough of Owen to tell.
After moving in, I got along with the three of them decently well, with not too many issues. However, I didn’t get particularly close to any of them either. Owen and Brandon only really used to room to sleep — I didn’t see much of them during the day except when Brandon would bring friends to the room — and Colton and I would just spend most of the time in the room minding our own business, whether it was studying, gaming, or chatting with friends. When I wasn’t in the room, I’d be studying somewhere else on campus or participating in the activities (mandatory fun) LEAP had prescribed for us in hopes that we’d make friends and not be loners.
Generally, there’s three ways living with a roommate will end up: you get really close with them, you have a friendly but not close relationship, or you end up at each other’s necks. In this case, it was the second; most people I considered friends ended up being from my LEAP pride, and even then, it was sparse because of my antisocial tendencies and my fear of rejection. We co-existed peacefully for the summer, knowing that we’d only be living together for around 60 days before never seeing each other again. Or so I thought.
My first “semester” living by myself was an adjustment for sure — I had to learn to hold myself accountable, set a sleep schedule, do my laundry regularly, budget how much I spent, and stay caught up on my studies. Since I was looking forward to managing these things by myself, it wasn’t difficult whatsoever — just a big adjustment from high school. I definitely gained some weight because of the higher-carb diet at college, which threw me off, but otherwise, I found a part time job to allow me to spend where and when I wanted and everything else pretty much fell into place.
When fall rolled around, it was time to move dorms. After two months of living in South — residence halls that were more like the “traditional dorm experience” than anything else — I was looking forward to moving to the much more luxurious North housing area, with its recently (ie. last 20 years) built residence halls and more roomy dorms. Even though most dorms in North were suite style (two rooms with two people each connected by a common area and bathroom) I actually volunteered to live in a supplemental style dorm because of how nice they were — I mean, seriously, look at the pictures:
High ceilings, modern furnishings, and only five people living in a six person room: it seemed like a sweet deal at a fraction of the usual price of living in North. I got to move in early because there was a week between LEAP and the regular fall semester, and man, I was looking forward to living here. But then I met my roommates: four other people, every single one of them being international students. There was Jason, from Shanghai, China, Sriparno, from Dubai, UAE, Omar, also from Dubai, and Sharath, from India. Being the only domestic student among a room of internationals would definitely be interesting, to say the least.
All of them ended up moving in during the week I was at home (I had headed home promptly after moving my stuff in), and I met them when I came back the Saturday before the semester began. All of them were definitely a lot easier to get along with than my summer roommates, but then again, all of them spent a significant amount of time in the room and had interests in common with me. We’d spend evenings talking late into the night about the countries they came from, how they differed from the US, and all kinds of other random topics that came up. I got to know them super well and learned a lot of super interesting things; even so, our friendship barely went outside of the room, where I spent a significant amount of time with friends I made through clubs and class.
Even though one’d expect me to become close friends with my roommates during freshman year, we never really did too much outside of living together. We still talk to each other occasionally, and I’m decent friends with one or two of them still, but we didn’t become close friends because of our mutual focus on academics and becoming involved in and around campus. I was never really into the whole “roommates get super close and live together for years” deal because I like meeting and living with completely new people, so I figured this was better than how things worked out with my summer roommates at least.
The year seemed to speed by in a flurry of classes, clubs, work, and other stuff, and before I knew it, we were moving out of the dorm after two fun semesters. It was definitely an improvement over my summer roommate situation and, while I had a lot of things I’d do differently with regards to freshman year, my roommate situation wasn’t one of them. However, that summer, my plan was to stick around campus and do research while taking a couple classes to get ahead, and it would actually be the first time I’d be living completely alone, having subleased an online friend’s apartment for the months after she’d graduated…
Part 2 Coming Soon
Day 2/31
