My first year roommate really wanted to go to Duke because her boyfriend went there. She lasted for two weeks before deciding that she was going to transfer, and therefore she hated all things UVA and everyone who liked it there. She studied constantly because she needed a high GPA to transfer, so I was never allowed to play music or hang out in the room because she was studying. She also went to bed at 11PM in a suite full of night owls. Her boyfriend's nickname for her was "Booper" and he used to leave these saccharine filled messages on our answering machine. Second semester, she was allowed to have her car and she went to Duke EVERY WEEKEND.
She did not get in to Duke, and ended up transferring to Wake Forest just to be closer to him. We never heard from her again.
One day, my BFF (who I met in college and knew this girl) called me up and asked me if I'd looked at the wedding announcements that day. I said no, and she said "do it ASAP!". Imagine my glee when I saw the announcement of her boyfriend engaged to someone ELSE!!!
He also had the worst taste in clothes ever, all of which was stained pink, because nobody ever told him how to separate his laundry.
I think that learning to have to live with someone else is one of the great non-classroom lessons of college and think all first-years should have to have a roommate. That said, first-year roommate and I were very different and were never friends, but also did not have horror stories and respected each other's space. Soph year I moved from one walk-thru double to another and while friendly was never friends with either roommate, we co-existed. After that I was in singles, once in a suite with friends that turned out to be the actual worst living experience of all.
Heh.
I happened to be sitting in the Dupont Circle Starbucks when reading the paper. Dupont is a heavily gay area. When I saw the announcement and gasped out loud, the guy next to me saw what i was looking at and said "Old boyfriend?" and I said no. Then he said "Old girlfriend?"
Ah, Dupont Circle. Did I mention I once made out with a guy there? During that march on Washington after Clinton was elected....
Ah, Dupont Circle. Did I mention I once made out with a guy there?
well, where else, really?
Freshmen all lived in a dorm that set up as suites, with two rooms with a half bath barely big enough for a toilet and a small sink in between. The phone was in the half bath, so almost every time you sat down on the toilet, you ended up answering the phone and handing it in one direction or the other.
In the first suite I was in, the other three roommates all had HTHs (hometown honeys - Is that abbreviation still around?), and they spent all their spare time sitting on one bed talking about their boyfriends. The only conversations I had with my roommate was over our continued struggle over the overhead light. I was the pro-overhead light faction. Then the RA came to me and said my roommate wanted me to change rooms because she thought I was "strange." After another roommate switch, I finally ended up with a roommate with whom I was perfectly compatible, in that we rarely spoke and she could sleep through anything, which was good because the other side of the suite was party central. I'm still good friends with one of my suitemates, but I was very glad to get into a single room the next year.
I was in a dorm my freshman year, and it was previously a hotel, so the suites/rooms were pretty big. Still, big adjustment to live with four people all of a sudden. The closets were walk-in, though, and two of us moved our desks into two of them, so we had some privacy.
I liked all four girls but one, who was a little annoying but never really there. And it was NYU, right on 10th St. and Broadway, so we all spent most of our time out of the room anyway.
