One of the most dreaded things when starting college is the idea of living with a complete stranger you likely have nothing in common with.
There’s also so much pressure to become best friends with that person, which is ridiculous. Sure, sometimes it happens — it’s great when it does — but it doesn’t always work out. That pressure of an instant best friend piles on to so many other stressful elements when starting college.
But, once freshman year is over — or more typically about midway through the spring semester — the question of roommates is broached again.
As it comes time to pick your housing and go through the housing process, you’ll be deciding who you’ll live with for the entirety of next year. This can cause drama between friends, as different housing options require different amounts of students to fill them.
For some, it’s really easy to pick who you’ll live with. College is a great time to make really strong bonds with people.
Others know they really don’t want to live with someone, and to those people, I give you serious props.
I have lived in Harborview for my junior and senior year of college. And I love it there.
For three semesters, I’ve had one roommate and she’s one of my best friends.
We’ve been sharing a room, but I don’t mind that. Sharing a room is just what I expect to do in college, part of the whole experience.
This semester, I’m facing a very different reality. I have my own room, and I have my own apartment.
My roommate and best friend is spending the semester in Washington ,D.C. In theory, this empty bed should have been filled by a transfer student or possibly someone who needed to change rooms for one reason or another. But the bed never got filled.
As of Jan. 12, I have had what feels like a very large, very empty apartment to myself. It has been quite an adjustment.
There are definitely some advantages to living alone. You can keep everything the way you like it.
If you’re very neat, you can keep the apartment clean. If you’re very messy, then you can allow your apartment to get a little messy — to a reasonable, not pigsty extent.
While I do appreciate the new freedom of it all, I’ve come to fully appreciate the importance a roommate can hold.
The absolute worst part of living alone is how alone you really are. When you wake up, there’s no one there, and the same for when you go to sleep.
On the other side of the bedroom, there’s just a bare blue mattress that I haven’t figured out what to do with yet.
There’s also so much more empty space I have to occupy. The apartment is always quiet, and it’s a silence that is difficult to fill.
Within hours of returning from winter break, I had already locked myself out and there was no one there to come to my rescue.
I’ve talked with a few friends, and they all ask how it is. Some always say how they’d hate to live alone.
That makes me glad to know I’m not the only one who need a roommate to help fill the void and balance things out.
Maybe I’d feel different if my roommate was some stranger or if I didn’t like them, but living alone is a challenge.

ALEXA ROGERS
[email protected]