I had expected college to be a fun-filled adventure full of parties, cute relationships, and friends. Instead, I spent my first two years stressing over grades, taking unanticipated naps, and being poor. It was a journey. A pathetic journey. This was mostly because the universe decided to spice things up and give me some pretty terrible roommates. Also, lots of boy troubles, but mostly bad roommates. And it’s not just me either, there’s a whole psychological phenomenon about this called the Roommate Effect (Go Science!). My roommates just happened to embody this. I wasn’t having fun and I almost felt kind of guilty for wasting what were supposed to be some of the best years of my life being angsty and pathetic. So I’m halfway through my second semester of sophomore year and I can’t wait for it to be over. This semester had been the worst so far and I was desperately looking to get the hell out of my apartment. So, I’m locked away in my room, halfheartedly glancing over the responses to my roommate profile on the student housing services website. I had laid out a friendly, stringent set of guidelines for my future roommates in my profile to avoid what I dealt with the first two years of college. This included the basics: cleanliness (I was sick of being the only person [OUT OF FIVE] who did dishes); overnight guests (I was tired of living in the Bone-Zone™) because I was sick of hearing unnecessarily loud sex and being afraid to leave my room because my roommates could be going at it with some rando at any given moment; social habits because I had lived with sorority girls during my first year of college and had to endure about fifty-too many parties; sleeping preferences because my current set of roommates were all night-owls who loved to have frequent shouting matches with their boyfriends and families in the living room at 3 A.M. while I was attempting to sleep; and smoking habits because I was beyond done with getting fined for living with stoners (and having to dismantle fire alarms in the bathroom as my roommate was confined to the toilet).

       The responses so far were not looking good: promising people tended to have cats, which I’m deathly allergic to, or were dudes that my parents would not let me live with. I briefly considered sucking it up and living with a cat until my nurse boyfriend alerted me that too much epi-pen can cause things like strokes, death, and a build-up of fluid in my lungs. I begrudgingly ruled out cat-ladies. I was back to square one, where I’d concluded that all the good people already found roommates and that I got gypped because I was too dumb to realize my roommates sucked earlier. As someone with older parents from a Catholic upbringing, I am more than willing to admit that college life was bit of a culture shock—and that I was attempting to shelter myself from lifestyles that my parents did their best to protect me from. My lease was expiring soon (thank you, Jesus) so I didn’t have time to be picky. I sucked it up and lowered my standards. It seems that this is a common theme for college-aged girls these days.

       Roommate search aside, life was going terribly. The schoolyear had been off to a rocky start: for starters, I had a crappy, abusive boyfriend; then my crappy boyfriend moved to Minnesota and broke up with me on Christmas because “I wasn’t moving with him,” so I went into 2019 with maybe not the best attitude; so second semester, I got a new, hotter boyfriend in January that broke up with me over the phone on Valentine’s day (I’m a lucky gal, what can I say); also, the day I got a new, hotter boyfriend, my old boyfriend decided to tell me he loved me for the first time; my new apartment was conveniently located next to some train tracks, so when my roommates were actually letting me sleep, the train’s horns weren’t; my roommates sucked; I hated all the classes I was in; my parents had just discovered my Tinder because they hired a private investigator to stalk me both physically and on the internet so we weren’t on speaking terms; and I had bags under my eyes for the first time in my life. So yeah, not ideal.

       I needed someone to cosign the loan for my apartment, so I had to comply with the parentals’ wishes and scrolled past all the messages from men. Living with boys probably would have been brutal anyways. I managed to find one message from a girl, but I needed two to fill a 3x3. Her name was Grace and she wanted to meet for coffee in about forty-five minutes because she actually read my profile (!!!) and had a hole in her schedule that matched mine. I clicked on her profile, only to see a tomboy gamer chick staring back at me. This was not the route I was trying to go down. In my imagination, I would be living with two very girly ladies that would enjoy singing Christmas music with me, baking, and who would want to do face masks together. Think year-long sleepover. So yes, I was a  little apprehensive about living with someone who didn’t look like they’d want to participate in those sorts of things. But I needed to find a place quickly and I needed coffee and I needed roommates, so I agreed to meet up. I began rummaging through my room, tuning out the sound of my roommate and her boyfriend going at it on the other side of my wall with some *N Sync, as I prepared to meet a potential roommate. Next thing I know, *N Sync and I are trudging through the snow, grappling with my lousy mood, which definitely could have been attributed to my lack of coffee/newfound eye bags and the fact that I was dating to my ex-ex boyfriend again, who had been surprisingly decent so far (my most recent boyfriend’s good looks humbled him). I had great taste and reasoning sometimes. This was not one of my sometimes. Also, this school is filled with smart people and I’m not necessarily one of them. Plus, I really had no choice but to start talking to him again because NO ONE meets outside of dating apps, so this was really all my parents’ fault.

         By this point, I’m walking into Espresso Royale—"Tatiyana?” Naturally, I forgot my glasses, so I’m also squinting at every discernable face in the crowd until I catch a wave.

          “Hey there!” My mood instantly changes, I see a smiley, friendly face staring back at me that looks drastically more feminine than the gamer-chick her profile had led me to believe she was. “So, first things first: your listing on the student housing services page mentioned your dog: I think we should exchange dog pics first and foremost!” Before I even got a chance to sit down, she whipped out a cracked Samsung Galaxy and proceeded to show me the cutest Bernese Mountain Dog I had ever seen, “This is my baby, Flynn.” And just like that, we proceeded to have a four-hour conversation. Needless to say, we got along very well and decided to room together. Initially, we planned on renting a townhome, but that process went very, very poorly so we found a 2x2. The interviews for a third roommate are a story of their own.

       Before Grace, I had a TON of awful roommates. I’m sure I could have been a better roommate too, but I had justified reasons to not be super friendly with most of my roommates. I went out of my way to be good to my roommates (I tried Pavloving several of them into liking me) too, and it was never really reciprocated. Loved feeling unwelcomed in my own home. In their defense, I hadn’t selected 8 out of the 11 roommates I had during my first two years of college. I filled out compatibility questionnaires for two out of the three places I stayed in and had only gotten along with two roommates. Twenty-five percent success rate. Whoever created those tests needs to be fired. But, to be fair, part of the problem was that I went from l living in a conservative, Catholic household to living in places where I regularly walked in on several of my roommates having sex on our couch. I had roommates who would bring people over to do LSD (I was unaware that 20-year-olds could get their hands on this stuff). There was also the freelance waxer: her room was directly across from mine and she often took the liberty of giving Brazilian waxes in the living room where I unwillingly saw the genitals of friendly, shameless strangers and her boyfriend. This is how I saw my first naked person, as well as the other twenty that came after throughout my first semester (she ran out of wax during second semester, thankfully). She also dated the maintenance man, who later moved into our apartment living room, and I learned that she and boyfriend both were both exhibitionist screamers who once attempted to have sex in MY room while I was in there, so there’s that. But still, my living situations probably would have been better if I had been better: if I had been more open-minded and more verbal, at the very least, my first year would have gone a lot more smoothly. Life’s what you make it. While I would not have been able to tune out the ridiculous orangutan-mating-call-like orgasms I had to endure throughout the year, I might have been able to live in a less party-friendly environment. There are numerous instances where my communication would have solved some of my problems: