Roommates a valuable part of college living

Despite popular belief, all roommates are not the spawn of Evil. Occasionally, a roommate… Despite popular belief, all roommates are not the spawn of Evil. Occasionally, a roommate might smell like a yak, talk way above or below your comfort level or enjoy blasting the type of music you most despise between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m.

But unless you’re a more-than-garden-variety lunatic, odds are your roommate will be about as normal as you.

Your roommate provides an automatic gateway to social endeavors for at least a few weeks. When you’re both new to campus, you can share party invitations and connections, providing each of you with twice as many outlets for human contact. Working together can make your first nights on campus chances to rock out instead of exercises in isolation.

Although you’re in a new situation, your relationship with your roommate is not unique. Relationships, whether with friends, coworkers, lovers or family members, function only when you give each other space and put time into making it work.

Therefore, beware of sharing all your friends, no matter how well you get along. You’ll want time apart. Since you work and sleep in a rather small room also occupied by your roommate, you’ll probably want some of that time to come through separate recreational activities.

Worse than the mutual need for time apart is when one, typically more gregarious roommate gets rather annoyed when another, generally less outgoing roommate insists on doing everything together.

Giving yourselves a little time apart will improve your time together, whether you’re good friends, mutually tolerant bunkmates or Superman and Lex Luthor.

For people used to the company of parents or siblings, roommates can ease the difficulties of adjusting to a life away from home. While the thought of coming home to a silent, empty room attracts some students, others take comfort in the presence of a roommate with whom they can talk at the end of the day.

If you crave evening company but lack a roommate, you might begin to look a little strange wandering the halls in search of friends every night.

A close roommate can help you out, lending you her computer when yours crashes at 3 a.m. the morning a term paper is due, or setting you up with her boyfriend’s hot cousin.

If you’re worried about safety, your roommate can look out for you and raise concern if you disappear. Without keeping tabs on you, your roommate still monitors your existence and makes sure you’re okay between your weekly calls to Mom and Dad.

Figuring that my odds of getting a good roommate increased with the number of roommates I requested, I aimed for an eight-person suite freshman year and worked my way down to a triple in Holland Hall.

Although having more roommates also increases your chances of having more bad roommates, I operated on the precept that the majority would rule. If five people live together and three are cool, you can band together and scare away the uncool minority.

Think about it: Would you rather live one-on-one with a monkey-collecting, polka-playing, tap-dancing yodeler who doesn’t understand the concept of soap, or share your new digs with the aforementioned person and four somewhat-normal friends?

You can get rid of undesired roommates by using a myriad of tactics, like discussing your many highly-contagious diseases, smashing objects compulsively or facing a corner and arguing with yourself instead of sleeping. More drastic tactics include hiding their mattresses around Oakland and not showering.

Having disposed of the unwanted roommates, you and your good roommates will enjoy the additional space left by the departed minority.

If all goes well, you won’t need to resort to energy-taxing methods of roommate removal. Although I was initially disappointed that I liked both of my roommates and couldn’t make use of my roommate-repelling strategy, they became my good friends and, in the end, I was glad I didn’t have to scare them off.