More roommates

One of your biggest concerns before heading off to college is probably your roommate. During the summer, the university sends your roommate's name, contact information and email address which is good because you can then look each other up on Facebook. You can learn about your roommate by reading the Facebook page and communicate with each other by email. Your roommate may seem to be the best person in the world -- until you spend a week or two together. This happened to me.

Over the summer, my roommate and I talked a lot through email and we both became extremely excited to have been matched as roommates. We coordinated what we were both going to bring and we planned things that we could do together. I could not have been happier that I was rooming with her.

However after two weeks, my impression of her completely changed. Don't get me wrong, she is probably a great person. But our personalities clashed way too much to be able to room together. My roommate is a passive individual. When she is with her friends and having a good time she seems like a lot of fun. Not so when you live with her.

My roommate cried numerous times because she was not happy living with me. I'm not one to talk to someone when they're crying, at least not when I don't really know them well and perhaps, don't even like them. So I let her cry for the first few times. Then it got really annoying.

Why was she crying? Well, I'm a fairly independent person. I like to be busy all the time and get a lot of work done. When I was in my room, I usually had lots of homework to do. She didn't like being ignored and after a couple of months, she said she felt like she couldn't ever be in the room when I was. So she spent the majority of her time in the floor lounge rather than our room when I was in there.

Sometimes I would accidentally fell asleep with my television on a bit too loud and that would upset her. Yet she didn't like it when I asked her to be quieter. I had early classes, and she would either come in after I fell asleep or even more often, as I was falling asleep, and then she would open and close her obnoxiously loud and heavy closet doors. I'm an extremely light sleeper so this would wake me up; she would do this in the morning as well.

The worst part was that, too many times, she didn't tell me that I was upsetting her until afterwards. We tried talking about it. But I was always busy with homework when she wanted to talk to me, so I wouldn't be what she called 'engaged enough' in the conversation. This would get her even more upset and lead to more crying.

All in all, what I'm trying to say is that you may think that you and your roommate will be the best match and that you're going to have a great time, but until you really know your roommate's habits, his or her personality and everything else, don't get too excited.

Know that you both need to work on pleasing the other. If your roommate is a neat freak, please tidy up your side of the room a bit when it gets disastrous. Don't go too far out of your way to please your roommate, but be sure to keep it in mind.

Oh, and one more thing. I've known people who've come to university along with friends from home, and then the two of them had each other as roommates. Maybe it can sometimes work, but it can be dangerous to the friendship too. If it doesn't work out, it can cost you the friendship. And that's what I've seen.

Back to my own experience: I may not have thought about her feelings as much as I should have. I now know that I could have been wrong in that aspect. But sometimes roommates are just not meant to be. And although an experience like that might seem to be the worst match of roommates, you can grow from it, and you should grow from it. Luckily, I moved out after one semester. And lucky her - she got that huge room to myself while I got stuck with someone else who didn't turn out to be too much better. But I know I've grown from it, and that is what is most important.