Things I Learned After Rooming with My Best Friend from High School
By: Jenna Wise
Heading into my freshman year of college, I was admittedly pretty terrified. After having chosen to stay in the area for college to be near home instead of heading out of state, I still found myself becoming considerably anxious at the thought of heading off to college, alone, starting over with no one I knew nearby. With this in mind, I was pretty surprised when my best friend announced that she would be committing to Shippensburg, which I had already been considering doing. After thinking about the decision for several months into my senior year of high school, we each individually decided that Ship was the right school for us. We were immediately absorbed in decorating our room, picking the residence hall we would live in, and even coordinating the colors of our bathroom towels. It wasn’t until my dad (who also went to Shippensburg) sat us down to talk about the issues we could face as two good friends rooming together that I stopped to consider that things might not be perfect between us all the time after we lived together.
Not long after moving into Ship, I realized my dad was right. I was now faced with the dilemma of juggling my friendship and what I felt were the rights I had as a roommate; needless to say, tensions began to build. Whenever we had fought in high school, my best friend and I had returned to our separate homes, cooled off, and then texted each other to apologize. Sharing a room with one another eliminated any possibility of that happening. I learned things about her that I had never known, little habits that you would never know about someone unless you lived with them. Learning to deal with these things was a gradual adjustment that I knew would be important for both of us if we intended to remain best friends. Through this, I discovered that my lack of communication about the way that I felt was driving a serious wedge into our relationship as roommates and best friends. In making this discovery, I found it much easier to be honest about the way that I was feeling and the beliefs that I felt were important and did not want compromised.
However, not everything I discovered about living with my high school best friend was negative. Through this process, I have learned a lot about the things that I can do to be a better roommate, communicator, and friend. Also, because we live in such a confined space, I know my best friend better than I have ever known her, and now know ways that I can tolerate the things that she does that once annoyed me during the beginning weeks of first semester. I am extremely grateful for the new friendships I have made at Ship, but I am so thankful for the memories I have made with my best friend and the things that I have learned about her. My dad was right, living together can spell doom for a friendship; in our case, however, it only brought us closer and provided us some of our most valuable memories with one another.