A good roommate is hard to find.
Freshman year of college can normally make or break college students. Some college students can make a lot of friends and get involved in multiple clubs, while others have to deal with nonchalant professors and godforsaken roommates. In my case, I was a combination of the two. More importantly, while I was a student who had the “godforsaken” roommate, I also contributed to the role.
During freshman year, I was roommates with a girl named Emily. Emily was the exact opposite of myself — sociable and heavily involved in fitness. Unlike Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract”, Emily and I did not attract whatsoever. Sure we would communicate with each other from time to time, but other than that, we’d keep our distance and to ourselves.
Although Emily and I were very cordial with each other, there was one thing that would cause friction between us– she never locked our dorm door. I don’t like to repeat myself, but I found myself having to repeat several times for her to lock the door whenever she left the dorm. After an act of a dorm robbery (i.e. one of her friends stole my chemistry lab book), I took it upon myself to take matters in my own hand.
Whenever Emily was out of the room for more than 10 minutes, I would lock her out of the dorm. I would wait almost five minutes after her continuous knocking to let her back in. In one event, I had just come back to the dorm from out of town and saw that Emily had (once again) left the door unlocked and had not been in the dorm since the previous day, seeing that her keys were left on her drawer. I then decided to take a nap until Emily suddenly came pounding on the door. I did not get up to answer the door, regardless of the many texts she sent me. Moral of the story: respect your roommates’ boundaries and their wishes in order to avoid numerous conflicts.
Names have been changed for anonymity.