Before starting college, I knew in my heart that I wanted to live in a dorm for my first year. It did not matter where I ended up, whether it was miles and miles away at Virginia Tech or twenty minutes away at VCU—I wanted to gain that first-year experience of dormitory life. A common piece of advice I heard when I admitted this was to never, ever, ever, ever dorm with your friends.
Now, I can see the negativity surrounding choosing your friends as roommates. There’s the potential that it could completely ruin the friendship as living with someone is a completely different situation compared to just seeing them every day at school. There’s also the fact that there are certain friends who can be good friends but horrible roommates.
Naturally, I ignored all this and decided to live with three of my closest friends. I would say every situation is different as my friends and I were passionate and certain about dorming together. When we all got accepted to VCU and decided to dorm our first year, we created an intricate plan that ensured we would all have each other as roommates. We created roommate contracts and rules that ranged from what meals we would eat our first week to whether or not it is okay to pee in the shower (it is). My friends and I even created a Pinterest board on what we wanted our dream apartment to look like. As you can see, we were all comfortable and confident with rooming together.
When we got the results of the housing application back and saw that not all four of us were grouped together in a West Grace South apartment, it was chaos and tears. We had chosen West Grace South to avoid paying for the meal plan and it was the easiest way we would room together. Fortunately, we managed to do a roommate switch and we all stopped being dramatic.
So far, my experience has been fine. Yes, there are times when we have mini-arguments but those get resolved easily with the right communication. I have already made so many memories in that apartment with my three best friends in just four short months. Rooming with your friends just means seeing a different aspect of them that you do not see every day. It means seeing their night and morning routines, their struggle meals, and witnessing their disturbing sleeping habits.
There are so many fun memories I can recount already. My favorite memory is the first night we slept in the dorm and all four of us congregated in a room and talked all throughout the night. I remember walking to Kroger in 45-degree weather at night with my roommate just to get ice cream. I remember cutting out scraps from magazines with my other roommate to decorate the living room and playing Taylor Swift on the TV. I remember all of us deciding to cook fried rice and starting a mini-fire on the stove. We have this inflatable ball in our living room that we use to play a game of “don’t let the ball touch the ground”.
I love living with my best friends and having the opportunity to make these memories with them and grow closer as a result of it.