I am currently a junior in college and for the three years I’ve been at college, I always have some new horror story to tell. Honestly, I can write on and on about all of the college living nightmares I’ve endured. I’ve dealt with just about every type of roomate. Roommates who make ignorant racist comments, or are drug addicts or alcoholics, roommates who do not understand the simple concept of cleaning or how to do it, roommates who never take out the trash, roommates who use your stuff without asking, roommates who are so loud that it’s unbelievable and so much more. Let me remind you that I’ve only had seven different roommates in the past three years. Yeah, let that soak in.
Most of my horror stories come from my first two years in college, so now in my third year of college, I’m completely exhausted with college living situations. They just never seem to work out for me. However, I was naive enough to think that things would be different this year. When I first moved into my new apartment in State College (I transferred from Penn State Abington) it looked so pretty and I loved everything about it. I have my own room, I don’t have to share a bathroom, and I only have two roommates; one being a good friend of mine whom I met in Abington so we get along swellingly and the other being a very nice senior who is almost never home.
Things were going well until the second or third week of school. My downstairs neighbor began banging on her ceiling repeatedly one night, when I was playing music on medium volume on my cell phone. Yes, my cell phone. I was so confused that myself and my close friend/roommate went downstairs to see if the girl living below us was having an exorcism in her room or something. Upon knocking on her door, the girl seemed nice and said that she can hear my music from her room. I didn’t argue with the girl, I just honestly thought she was weird and way too sensitive to noise.
After our informal meet up she began to be super petty. When I would close my cabinet drawers in my bathroom, when I would put my sneakers on the floor, when my roommate and I would be talking in the kitchen or nearby my room, or when I would cough, she would pound on my ceiling like there was no tomorrow. I didn’t even know what to do. It got to a point that when I would make the slightest noise and she would bang on my ceiling and I would stomp my feet back at her. I reported this girl’s odd behavior to my leasing office who did nothing and told me to call the police if I needed help. Gee, thanks leasing office you’ve been such a great help!
This situation came to a head on Jan. 7. For those of you who don’t know, Jan. 7 is rapper Mac Miller’s birthday. Miller died on Sept. 7, 2018 of an accidental overdose, so celebrating his birthday is just a nice day of remembrance and celebration for the late rapper. It was a Saturday, so after I came home from work, I began playing all of his songs. I played it off of my TV in my bedroom, but of course around 9:30 or 10 p.m. on a Saturday night in a college town, she decided to start banging on my ceiling. I then decided to change rooms and play my music out in the living room. However, it didn’t make a difference and this girl still called the police on me. To add insult to injury, the white male police officer who responded to her unnecessary 911 call was incredibly rude and aggressive towards me and my roommate (we’re both black) despite us being respectful towards him. So, the next time this girl bangs on my ceiling I will be calling the police back on her for harassment. It’s what she deserves. I’ve just come to terms with the fact that my college living situations will never be good, but all of my crappy college living experiences make for good stories at parties.