College is the awakening of your life away from home, and often, it’s the first time for most people to be fully independent and be their own “boss.” But while you are away from your parents, the majority of the time you’ll still have roommates. Whether you share a room with one person, or you share a suite with three others, the chances are you’ll have a roommate and it’ll be a hard adjustment.
Now, it’s not always a huge, awful, and hard adjustment. You might immediately click with your roomie and have the best time ever. However, little things are going to irk you, the room might not be cleaned/organized to your standards, you may not like the way they handle conflict, or your personalities may just clash. There are so many things that can go wrong, but there are also so many things that can go right. I personally have had a very rough roommate journey over the past few years, but reflecting on it now as a senior, I feel that I can provide insight to others about my mistakes and experiences.
Your roommate can have a huge impact on your mental health, confidence, trust level, and even your performance in school. If you have a roommate who supports you, hangs out with you, communicates well, and is generally personable, chances are, you’ll be in pretty good spirits and have a good time living with them. However, if your roommate is rude, never wants to do things with you, lies to you, goes behind your back, etc., there’s also a good chance that you’ll be pretty miserable. Don’t get me wrong, you can also add to the problem, no one is 100% innocent, but clashing with someone you live with can be hard and mentally taxing, and no one is the best version of themselves in a situation like that.
For my freshman year at JMU, I found my roommate through the Facebook group like most students do. I met a girl and talked with her for a few days, we decided to be roommates, and we immediately started picking out room designs. I was so excited to meet her in person since we were from totally different states and couldn’t meet each other before moving in. (I also have to make a note that I was a freshman during COVID-19 and that made this situation a lot more difficult). I moved in first and spent my first night alone in the room, and met some girls in our hall and really, really clicked with one of them.
My roommate moved in the next day and we got along for the first few hours, but after that, it was clear that we were very different people that did not mesh that well together. We both made other friends in the hall, but at the end of the day, or when neither of us had plans, we would come back to the room and just sit. She would often tell me to do my homework because she was doing hers, to be productive because she was being productive, or just get upset when I wasn’t doing something she wanted me to. I was also interested in partying with friends, and she told me that I was not allowed to pursue that while I was her roommate and friend. After a few days and a few group hangouts with girls in our hall, I realized in group settings just how differently she treated me than others. She treated me like a child, and if I didn’t do what she wanted me to do, she got angry (and lowkey aggressive with me).
Thankfully, we got the message that we were all being sent home from the dorms because too many people had COVID-19, and I felt like my prayers had been answered when I packed up and went back home. However, I celebrated too soon because after about a month of being home, we were told we could go back to our dorms, and my parents forced me to go back to school to live with my roommate. I think I normally would’ve been able to survive this, but my best friends at JMU decided to stay home for the remainder of the semester so I felt completely alone and isolated. I cried to my therapist about how much my mental health had deteriorated, how scared I was when my roommate got angry with me, and how much I just wanted to go home and escape my situation. After talking to my mom and the school, I was approved for a roommate switch in the middle of November, and I moved into a different dorm entirely.
The second half of my freshman year was good and bad, roommate-wise. I moved in with a great girl who was super sweet and never told me what to do. However, since I moved in halfway through the year, she already had an established group of friends to hang out with, and I was not a part of that group. I didn’t have any other friends and I was too scared to do anything by myself. I became severely depressed, I was constantly anxious, and I had no social interaction outside of my roommate and classmates (who I didn’t talk to) for weeks. I spent every day in my room talking to my long-distance, toxic boyfriend, I only ate things that could be made in my room with a hot water kettle because I was too anxious to even walk down to the dorm kitchen, and I stayed in every. single. day. doing my homework because even if I wanted to go out and have fun, I didn’t have any friends to do that with. My roommate was always really nice to me and would always warn me when her boyfriend was coming over so I could leave, but I would really just sit outside somewhere, and doom scroll on my phone until she told me I could come back. Thankfully after half of February, I spent the remainder of the school year at home recovering from surgery, so I no longer had to be at school depressed about my lack of a social life.
My sophomore year of college was crazy. I moved into an off-campus apartment with 3 other girls, two of whom I had met in person a few times before leaving my freshman year, and the other one I had never met at all. At first, we all got along really well, but after a while, it became clear that there were buddies in the apartment; me and my wall-mate, and the other two girls who also shared a wall. I personally didn’t dislike anyone, but the other two girls told me that they weren’t a fan of my wall-mate and things quickly spiraled from there. (To make this easier to understand, the roommate who shared a wall with me will be Roomie A, and the other two girls will be The Besties.) Roomie A and I were really close, but she often got upset when I would talk to The Besties because I knew they didn’t like her and they often said things loud enough for her to hear that were not very nice.
After a while of living together, everyone got pretty comfortable, and things started to get messy and chaotic. If you know me, a messy apartment is my downfall. Roomie A and I had to constantly clean up after The Besties and I would be the only one to ever say anything, therefore, The Besties ended up having beef with me as well. Then Roomie A and I started to have problems because I made other friends and got a new boyfriend. She said she felt left out and replaced, which I tried to be sympathetic to, but then the lying and gaslighting began. Long story short, Roomie A and I had decided in October to resign our lease together, but by January, that was no longer the plan. I eventually had no problems with The Besties when Roomie A and I’s friendship was deemed over (very convenient) and now we’re mere acquaintances. As for Roomie A and I? We have each other blocked on everything, and I think we mutually made each other’s sophomore year pretty unbearable which sucks to reflect on (sorry for my role in everything if you’re reading this, Roomie A!). I thankfully had friends outside of my roommates my sophomore year which made my life bearable and most of the time pretty fun, but my apartment was a hostile location that no one really wanted to venture to. I was always afraid to talk on the phone with friends, my parents, or my boyfriend because I knew someone (aka Roomie A) was always listening and I never felt like my room was my safe place which was a weird feeling. At the end of the day, sophomore year roommate-wise was a little chaotic, but nothing compared to my junior year.
Speaking of junior year, this was absolutely my worst year yet. I resigned at my last apartment, but everyone else moved out, so I was getting new roomies. Two of them were randoms that I had never seen or spoken to before, and the other one was someone extremely close to me. I started off the year extremely excited for a fresh start and was immediately close to one of the random girls (and obviously the girl I already knew). Unfortunately, the girl I clicked with was not my wall-mate, and neither was the girl I previously knew before moving in. I ended up not really getting along with my wall-mate, but still tried to remain close to the other two girls. However, I quickly found out that the two girls that I thought were my friends were talking poorly about me (specifically the one I knew before moving in) and I quickly started having problems in the apartment. By the beginning of October, the apartment was extremely tense, and honestly scary to be in, but I was still doing my best to navigate the situation I was in because I didn’t want to have another drama-filled year.
Once again the apartment got messy (my kryptonite), I said my peace about it, and nothing changed. I don’t personally do well in an unclean, messy environment, and my mental health was in shambles. My best friend who attended JMU with me sophomore year moved schools, I didn’t have many other friends, and my boyfriend attended school two hours away at Virginia Tech. Behind the scenes, things were quickly escalating without me even knowing, my mental health was deteriorating, and I didn’t feel safe in my own apartment. The girl I thought I connected with at the beginning of the semester quickly became aggressive toward me with little to no reason at all, the roommate I was close with prior to moving in took her side without hearing an explanation from me, and I was scared to live in my own space because of the things that had been done and said to me. I ended up having to contact JMU about the situation, get a restraining order against the roommate I really liked at the beginning of the year, and then I was homeless for two weeks. I lived on my friend’s floor while looking for a new place and living out of my small suitcase, and then finally, I was permitted to go home until I could find a place to live at JMU. I lived at Virginia Tech with my boyfriend and his roommates for a month, found a new lease with two boys at JMU in a new neighborhood, and moved in at the beginning of December.
Living with the two boys wasn’t actually that bad at all. It was a lot better for my mental health than living in a scary situation, and I didn’t ever really interact with them because I lived in the basement while they lived on the top floor. However, because I was alone and didn’t have a lot of social interaction with roommates or many friends anymore, I was very depressed and had to strive to make and maintain connections with others I was friends with already at school. I ended up forcing myself to branch out and make a lot of new friends. I had people over frequently and even met my current roommate because of my drive to make my situation better. While it ended up being okay in the end, junior year was my most insane roommate situation EVER and I would never wish what I went through on anyone.
For my current situation in my senior year, I am extremely happy with my roommate. We absolutely have our differences, of course, but she has genuinely shown me what it’s like to have a positive, healthy living situation with other girls our age. We live in a two-person apartment, so it’s just us, but it has made a significant impact on both of our mental health to be put in a comfortable, safe living situation. We laugh, hang out, fight, and do almost everything together, but we always make sure to healthily communicate how we’re feeling and have set boundaries so that we know how to treat each other and the apartment. She knows the apartment has to be clean or I get crazy, and I know she gets impatient if I take too long to do something. At the end of the day, it’s all about communication and setting boundaries. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in a roommate situation, and it’s all because of mutual respect and both of us being comfortable with telling each other how we’re really doing or feeling. Shout out to my fellow Her Campus writer Emma who also happens to be my roomie, love you, girl!
While I got super unlucky during my first three years of college, these events probably won’t happen to you, so there’s no need to stress about being scared of being in your own apartment (unless you have a genuine reason to be!). Like I said before, be open, set boundaries, and COMMUNICATE. Who your roommate is matters, but how you communicate with each other is even more important. It took Emma (my senior year roomie) and I so long to understand each other and what we needed as roommates and as friends. There’s absolutely a learning curve, but as long as you genuinely want to get along, you don’t talk behind each other’s backs, and you’re straight up, you shouldn’t have any significant problems unless there’s something seriously wrong in your apartment/dorm situation like there was for me freshman/junior year. I wish you the best of luck in your roommate search (regardless of your year in college) and make sure you talk to someone for a while before you pick them! Good luck!