Finding a roommate as an incoming freshman can be one of the most stressful parts of the year leading up to college.
You always here crazy stories of people that lived with absolute psychos, and you just pray that it doesn’t happen to you. When looking at so many profiles and pictures of people coming to your school, it can get pretty overwhelming. Luckily for me, I ended up with the best living situation a girl could ask for. My roommate has become one of my best friends, and I am so thankful for her.
My story started the day I got the lovely garnet envelope in the mail saying, “Future Eagle!” From the moment I toured the campus, I knew that I’d end up coming to Winthrop. With that said, the first thing I did after accepting the offer to come to school here was start looking for a roommate. After a few disappointing weeks searching Facebook for the “Class of 2022” page, I finally saw some hope when I found a promising link. Still, there were very few people searching for roommates in October.
I started to get upset, feeling like I was wasting time when I could be doing some serious social media stalking on my potential new roommate, but there was nothing I could do. There came hope, though, when an upper classman posted a link for a roommate search website. The best way I can explain it is that the link was to a roommate version of a dating site, and it was probably one of the most awkward profiles I have ever had to make. I spent hours making sure my survey answers were perfect, finalizing my bio, and tearing through my senior pictures to find the perfect avatar (even though I ended up changing it four times). With my new profile complete, I started searching through other girls’ to see if I had any matches. I felt my heart skip a beat when I had a 100% match, but upon further examination I quickly started to realize that this girl and I would not get along. Feeling a little defeated, I found about five girls (even though there were only about ten in all) and sent them a really cringey introduction message.
After a few days, I got a message back from a girl that would be attending Winthrop in the fall as an incoming freshman. With a few very difficult attempts to talk on the website, we had to move to Facebook messenger because the system was so confusing. After talking for a few weeks, we decided that we were definitely potential prospects for each other. I was feeling pretty excited, but a little uneasy. This was the person I would be living with for an entire year. Should I really be saying yes to the first person I talk to? Is this all too good to be true?
A couple of weeks went by, and I had started to message a few more girls. Even though they were nice, I didn’t feel any connection with them. The first girl, though, I had still kept in contact with. I talked to a few of my friends from home about it, and they encouraged me to pursue this more than just texting. We ended up FaceTiming over Christmas break, which was extremely difficult because I had to get up every five minutes to help my mom put decorations in the attic. Still, we had impulsively decided from that point on to room with each other. We’d gotten our housing packets in the mail earlier that week and filled everything out very late at night to room together in the fall.
In a few months’ time, we were meeting in Columbia for the first time to plan out the decorations for our room. Like I said, I tend to get pretty excited about things and start them very early. Even though my mom dominated the entire conversation, it was still great to start planning out our color scheme and layout of our future dorm.
Flash forward to November, and my roommate has become one of my best friends. I had a pretty rough time at the beginning of the year with losing a lot of friends, but she supported me through everything. She is always enabling my impulsive TJ Maxx and Target trips, but still manages to curb my spending. I’m never bored when we’re together, and I have grown to love Netflix movie nights and five-minute dance parties.
I was very lucky with finding someone I have become so comfortable with, and I hope that others can do the same. The biggest tip I can give to people looking for roommates is to just be up front about your expectations. People aren’t going to be able to figure you out over the phone, and it’s understandable if you don’t end up with the first person you talk to. Even though it’s awkward to tell someone that you don’t think this is going anywhere, it’s still better than a tense living situation all year, or even having to tell them that you’re leaving mid-year.