The most important tip I can give any first-time dorm-dweller looking to get along with their roommate is this: Do not live with my first roommate.
Well, that's a bit unfair to [NAME REDACTED]. On paper, she and I should have gotten along great. We both played trombone in our high school bands. We had read and enjoyed some of the same books. Our names even rhymed.
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But, as the school year progressed, what could have been a good relationship went downhill. It seemed (to me) that I was the only one who ever took the trash out. She got a series of weird stains on the rug I had bought. She was a night owl, and I had to leave for work at 6 a.m. She ate my food. Once she even started playing trombone at two o'clock in the morning.
I'm sure I wasn't perfect either. I had my boyfriend over a lot. I had trouble working with people around, so instead of studying in the library I studied in our room, which meant I was always there. I left stinky running clothes hanging from the foot of my bed. I had terrible (to her) taste in music.
At the end of the year, we parted ways and have only spoken two or three times since — and this was at a small school, where we had a lot of opportunities to run into each other. The thing is, I'm sure [NAME REDACTED] was (and probably still is) a perfectly nice person. Heck, I think I'm a perfectly nice person, and I'm sure I was at 18, too. But [NAME REDACTED] and I didn't take some simple steps that would have made living together more bearable and *gasp* maybe even fun.
Learn from my mistakes, young roomies.