As the end of the semester rolls around, everyone seems to be getting serious cabin fever about their living situations.
People moving from residence halls to apartments say, “I can’t wait until I have my own bathroom!” People moving from old roommates to new roommates say, “I can’t wait until I’m not woken up by her hair dryer at 8 in the morning!”
Let’s give ourselves some credit. Sharing living space with people is a wild adventure of innumerable outcomes, and it can be a hard thing to learn straight off the bat.
We go straight from 18 years of living with our loving family into a contractual-style agreement with someone we may or may not have known before, then we walk into the room that will be our home for the next nine months.
That is a pretty big jump, so what happens from there on out is anyone’s guess. In a school of more than 50,000 people, if someone compiled all of the stories UF students had to say about their roommates, I bet it would be a pretty zany saga of the good, the bad and the crazy.
So, for another year of student living down, let’s all give ourselves a pat on the back.
The thing that always strikes me as odd is sometimes people will choose to live with other people they know, but not necessarily like, over living with a randomly chosen dorm or apartment mate — they find the thought of living with someone they have never met too uncomfortable.
They would prefer a roommate they only have the vaguest connection to over closing their eyes and spinning the wheel of chance.
For me, it’s the exact opposite. For the two years I have lived in the residence halls, I have felt more confident living with someone I have never met before than living with any friend or acquaintance that came to UF with me. The more random, the better.
I actually chose my freshman-year roommate solely on the basis that she was the only one on the floor who didn’t have a Facebook account.
So far, I can’t complain on my methodology because the girls I have lived with up to this point have all been absolute sweethearts.
On the flip side of my experiences though, I’ve had friends who have lived with randomly chosen roommates, and they end up quietly despising each other for the remainder of the school year.
But in my mind, I would rather end up hating living with a random roommate than end up hating living with a friend because in the first scenario, you haven’t lost anything by the end of it.
Having randomly selected roommates teaches you a lot about how to live with really different sorts of people, which is a pretty essential life skill. Even though you may not ever live with those people again, you will have to coexist with similar types of people eventually, either in classes or at work.
Most importantly, I think it teaches people how to roll with the punches.
Sure, there will be the good and the bad, but after the year is over, you can just look back on it with friends and tell stories and laugh about it. Or, if your experience was beyond a joking matter, at least you have learned what you never want in a roommate again, and hopefully, you will have better luck next time.
College and the few years after is the only compact time we get to try out new living arrangements with various types of places and various types of people.
Being fearless about the journey helps to test your limits, to expand your experiences and to come away with some great stories, which are possibly the best parts of college.
Lauren Flannery is a business administration sophomore at UF. Her column runs on Tuesdays. You can contact her via opinions@alligator.org.
