The amount of condolences I’ve received from friends simply hearing the title alone could only rival that of me surviving an apocalyptic catastrophe. And in full honesty, before moving in, I shared some similar sentiments.
Due to the layout of the sorority house I planned to move into, having seven roommates wasn’t exactly a choice.
Would I have chosen to live in a smaller room eight months ago? Absolutely. But it ended up being a canon event that forced me into several learning experiences (and enough stories to entertain for a lifetime) that I wouldn’t have gotten out of any other scenario.
So hold the sorries today – it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.
Upon welcoming you to our room, you would first see four personalized bunk beds, each with two desks spaced in between them. Though limited in space, eight individualities distinctly seep through their confinements. Posters range from dreamy Ariana Grande album covers to Elvis Presley military mug shots, mementos from us long before we met to nights out that would probably inspire eight very different recollections if inquired about, a landfill of shoes, inflatable toucans and a disco ball that works on alternate Fridays if we’re lucky.
(Yes, a 24×36 of this picture actually greets visitors from above my desk).
If anything, you can never run out of things to look at in this collage of a room and by the end each of us could probably hold some world record in iSpy.
I would say the overlap of similar items grew over time, however. That is, starting out as “half-friends” (some grey area between acquaintances and besties) worked entirely to our advantage in such a large space. It gave the room the feeling of a quiet retreat after a long day rather than a combat zone of constant chaos. As months went on, shared activities and classes became special and a way to connect outside of the room and unravel a lot of the personalities that were otherwise dormant to us.
But the overlap stayed minimal, which also taught me a lot. The range of people in the room (from hometown to major to personality) made conversations with each other unexpected and informative. On a night when some went to a concert at the Kia Forum, another might be packing for a ski trip, another going to cram for a next-day exam. You just would never know.
It exposed me to the multitude of perspectives within a single, fairly homogeneous Greek chapter and how each person was truly experiencing every sunrise through a different colored lens. It made me dismantle the idea that there was one “normal” way to go about life – my own habits started to feel so arbitrary, and it made it so much easier to coexist when I stopped trying to measure every other person against my own invisible rulebook.
With seven other people, you can also imagine chances were high of someone being in the room when you were in desperate need of exiled wind-down time. True solitude was nearly mythical. Again, the spectrum of priorities made it impossible to anticipate any sense of schedule. Morning interviews demanded blown-out hair. Siblings inconveniently dialed the older sister advice hotline. An alarm persisted in waking up the block before its groggy quelling.
I learned that privacy can simply be a nod to mutual respect rather than architectural distinctions. And independence now feels less like actual isolation and more like moving through an individual schedule and enjoying your own company even while in the presence of a lot of other people.
Headphones usually help this cause too.
In fact, on certain weekends when more than half the room would branch off on personal ventures, it would feel uncannily quiet, something I had mistakenly anticipated craving. In more extreme cases, one of my friends started being unable to fall asleep in the absence of house music, though that may fall closer to what we might classify as “needing help”.
Another idea that wormed its way into my stubborn mind was the importance of emotional elasticity and adaptability to frequent changes. Skipping studying to paint with someone who felt homesick, helping with homework for a class I had never taken, even putting together a communal rack of random accessories anyone could borrow whenever they wanted – all of it taught me how rewarding it could be to loosen my grip on time and possessions and let other people leave unexpected traces in my everyday life.
Reminder: none of us were best friends and showing up for each other was a completely optional choice.
Similarly, it taught me that small annoyances were insignificant and not worth calcifying. Let the alarm wake you up untimely at 7 a.m., but laugh over a TikTok at dinner together; we barely have time with each other at all.
And of course, with the proximity comes its benefits. Yes, there are seven extra chances someone will be in the room when you need to study – but there are also seven extra people to ask if you need something at the very last minute or have lost something important. Someone has it on standby, someone knows where it was last seen.
And during times when you barely want to get up or think of calling it in for a reading-by-myself kind of night, the productive one will already be on the way to their early class, and the sight alone guilts you out of bed or your favorite song playing through someone’s speakers while they get ready becomes too contagious not to join in.
Seven different people each doing their own thing had individual ways of bringing out the best parts of me, along with inevitable cautionary tales that will have my back long after we’ve all moved out. It made coexistence seem more and more like a privilege than a damnation.
I’m sure when we all leave the large room will once again return to a state of unattractiveness, but in a Disney movie ending type of reflection, I’d say I’m a better person because of it.
Would any of us redo this experience? Never. The lack of large closet space is one of the biggest deal-breakers.