Room applications and the search for your soul-friend

Every college kid handles cohabitation differently. A lot of the time, roommates don’t ride off together holding hands and smiling into the sunset. There are three types of roomies:

Best friends who are practically joined at the hip

They act like long lost siblings who were separated at birth. They specifically requested each other after meeting in person or connecting on Facebook. Or they just REALLY lucked out in the roomie lottery. These are the roommates you see eating every meal together, going to each other’s events, and the ones who will walk into your 10th reunion and spend more time with each other than with their dates.

My roommate and I on move-in day 2015

Roommates who simply coexist

They’re friendly. They don’t hate each other. Odds are these roommates applied via random selection and they’re complete strangers, save a few text conversations and social media stalking. Occasionally they bicker, usually over housekeeping rules, but when summer vacation comes around, they’ll eventually miss each other.

Sunday night floor bonding

Roommates who don’t stay roommates for long

Or just spend their entire year grumbling, arguing, and complaining. They don’t click and find endless excuses to stay out of their room. These are the roommates who only speak to each other if they’re arguing, the ones who start almost every conversation with: “You’ll never guess what _ did this time!” With all this tension between them, eventually the entire floor will wake up in the middle of the night to their explosive argument that ends in one of the roommates packing up and moving out.

I’ve seen all three roommate types on my floor. The two girls who live right across the hall grab breakfast together every morning and party together every weekend. My roommate and I filled out our roommate code at the beginning of the year and we’ve stuck to it ever since.

On the other end of the floor, two girls finally escalated from grumbling to a full-on screaming match at 3:00 am. One girl was about to fall asleep, the other girl came in late from a party and turned on all the lights. The first girl got up to turn the lights off, and it turned into a full-on Parent Trap brawl. I helped one of those girls haul all her stuff down two flights of stairs a few weeks ago.

Now, the point of all this is compatibility analysis stuff is to say that with sophomore dorms filling up fast, underclassmen who don’t have a future roomie are finding themselves left in the dust.

Your freshman friends determine who you might room with sophomore year – and beyond

Unfortunately there are a few important questions dorm applications don’t take into account:

Are you the type who makes lots of good friends but not a specific best friend? Despite your multitude of friends, they all have closer friends they want to room with.

Are you the type who gets along better with people of the opposite gender? I may wear makeup and heels but most of my best friends are still dudes. However, coed rooms are not exactly smiled upon.

Are you the type who’s not picky about the person with whom you share a living space? You applied for freshman housing under random selection for a reason: you wanted to move in with somebody completely new.

If any of these categories apply to you, you’re in luck. Towers offers single rooms and coed suites. But, you’re also out of luck because your chances of getting into Towers are kind of slim until junior year. So now might be the time to branch out and find a rooming situation that puts you a little bit out of your comfort zone. We all know any roommate who pays rent in the real world is welcome. If your decision ends up not being the right one for next year, you’ve lived and you’ve learned…or died a little bit and learned. But hey, that’s all part of college.