Are you a smart and savvy pre-collegiette looking for answers to some of your most personal questions about college? You know, the ones about boys, classes, roommates and parties that your school’s guidance office can’t help you with? Jen is here to answer those questions! Whatever your concern, she’ll do her best to help you so you can make sure you don’t just survive college, but rock it!
What are the pros and cons of sharing a dorm room with a roommate? – Nomin
Nomin,
Sharing a dorm with a roomie might seem difficult since dorms don’t have a ton of space, but you’ll soon find that it all works out well in the end!
A majority of the time, you won’t be your roommate’s BFF or her enemy, but somewhere in between. This is a good place to be, since you two can watch each other’s backs and hang out together sans stress while still doing your own thing. You’ll have someone who makes sure you get in safe at night and checks in with you on occasion to make sure everything is okay, and that’s a great benefit to have.
To peacefully coexist, just make sure you communicate properly and are respectful. If you’re both super busy during the week, you can also organize a weekly brunch to catch up on everything like my freshman year roommates and I did. This gives you a chance to stay connected and clear the air about any minor conflicts that occurred during the week.
In general, I think there a lot more pros than cons when you share a dorm room with a roommate, especially if you two do get along really well. When you do, you have someone to pillow talk with at night, be your wingwoman when you go out on the weekends and quiz you the night before a big exam. Oh, and of course someone who you can pull all-nighters with! (Trust us, that’s crucial.)
Even if you and you’re roomie aren’t best friends, which is totally fine and normal, at least you won’t have to sleep alone at night! If you two don’t get along because you don’t see eye-to-eye and disagree often, you’ll learn how to deal with a difficult person. On the bright side, you’ll be able to bond with other friends because you’ll spend less time in your room and more time with them, so you can develop stronger relationships outside of the dorm.
Another more obvious con of having a roommate would be that you’re trying to share such a small amount of space with someone else, of course. If you pack accordingly and make good use of your resources, though, you should be fine. You’ll get your freshman roommate assignment over the summer before your first year so you know who you’ll be living with before you arrive. Once you figure out who she is, you can email or Facebook message to start conversation and decide what resources you have and which can shared to maximize your room space.
Regardless of how you and your roommate get along, I’d suggest making a roommate contract with her so you can make sure that you’re both on the same page when it comes to roommate life. This is basically an agreement in which you two decide where you stand when it comes to things like bedtimes (or more accurately, what time the lights should go out so you can get some shut-eye), how clean the room stays and how you feel about visitors. It’s important to have so you can make sure you’re both in agreement, and in the unfortunate event that you two have problems, it’s a good document to have for reference.
In the end, having a roommate is like having a family member in your life. Sometimes everything is okay and goes smoothly, and other times things can get rocky and you want to get angry because she’s annoying you. Either way, you’ll learn how to deal with someone new, which will teach you a lot about yourself and about other people. Good luck!
