Carefully curating the perfect Instagram post that fully encapsulates all of your interests, your friends, and your outgoing-but-still-super-down-to-earth personality in just ten photos. Paying $15 to a sketchy “Freshman UCSB Class” Instagram account that may or may not steal all your credit card information. Having meaningless conversations with anyone who will DM you back just because you’re terrified you won’t find someone in time. You literally start to feel like you’re online dating.
You scroll through profiles, exchange awkward introductions, search for anything to keep the conversation going, and try to figure out if this stranger could become your best friend β or your worst enemy β for the next nine months. Every conversation feels oddly high stakes when you’re searching for “the one.”
And no, not the one you’ll marry or be with forever. I’m talking about your college roommate.
Starting New
As I finish my second year at UCSB, I’ve found myself reflecting on how much has changed since that terrifying move-in day.
Not too long ago, everything felt so uncertain. You’re standing at the edge of an entirely new chapter, leaving behind the life you’ve known for eighteen years and stepping into one you can’t even begin to imagine. I didn’t know what my college experience would look like, who my friends would be, what I wanted to study, or who I would be in college.
And I’m here to tell you that that’s what makes freshman-year roommate relationships so unique. Because neither do they.
You’re both experiencing the same uncertainty at the exact same time, unsure of who you are away from your hometown, your parents, and the version of yourself everyone knew in high school. Experiencing all of this with someone you just met is a level of intimacy that few romantic relationships ever reach, because they’re witnessing you become a completely new person in real time.
Once IN a lifetime friendship
By your second year, most people have started to figure things out. You know where your classes are, you’ve made a few friends, and you know how college works. Even though you obviously aren’t sure of everything, you’re no longer in completely unknown territory. That’s what makes that type of friendship truly special.
Watching your roommate have her first fight with her long-distance boyfriend, experiencing the terror of a full lecture hall for the first time, figuring out how you’re going to live off of 10 meals a week with zero income, and just experiencing going out to DP for the first time, not knowing where to go or how to act. The person that you figure this all out with sees everything. It’s something that’s truly once in a lifetime.
Post-Grad
What’s even stranger is that this type of relationship doesn’t really exist after college. After graduation, you might live with friends, significant others, or coworkers, but it’s different. By then, you’ve already become the version of yourself. You’ve established your routines, your values, your career goals, and the person you want to be. The people you meet afterward get to know a more complete version of you.
Your freshman-year roommate gets something entirely different. They meet you arguably at your worst.
They watch you make mistakes, change your major three times, question your friendships, call your parents crying, and slowly figure out what kind of person you want to become. They witness every awkward, uncertain, and transformative stage of your growth. There’s something incredibly vulnerable about being known during a period when you don’t fully know yourself yet.
When you move away again to start a new job, you’ve already done it before. You’ll never again be explaining the life you once had for eighteen years before college to someone, while simultaneously trying to start a new one.
When You Least Expect It
So while many people come to college hoping to find “the one,” I think some of the most meaningful relationships are the ones we never expect. Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for the person who figured it all out with me β navigating clueless nights wandering through Isla Vista, surviving on questionable Ortega, finding borderline-hidden classrooms, going out on dead week and being yelled at by upperclassmen, and just figuring out life away from home during one of the most transformative periods of my life.
It’s one of the hardest, yet best, times in our lives, and having someone grow alongside you through it all is such a rare kind of friendship, but one I’ll always be grateful for.