What do you do if you just can’t handle the stuff that your roommate does? What if you have absolutely nothing in common? What do you do?
I understand all of these questions.
I have been at ETSU for five semesters and have been through several different roommates. I have dealt with the sleepless nights, the drunk stumbling and asking of questions.
I would also like to emphasize that it has not been my fault that I’ve been through so many roommates and these have not been my shenanigans.
Anyway, one of my roommates was hardly ever in our room and when she was it was either with her boyfriend or fighting on the phone with her boyfriend. Then there were of course the rare occasions when her boyfriend would try to question me about her whereabouts (one of the downfalls of actual room phones) which was always a fun time, let me tell you.
Another roommate always stayed at her boyfriend’s in Kingsport, or I had two roommates when they both lived here. Now this roommate situation was the real doozy! She either never went to classes, slept all day or made things just really difficult on me when I had things to do. Then there were the many nights of them arguing and me being in the middle.
One night I had to drive around Johnson City looking for him at 1 a.m., and then there was the night that some guys tackled him in the hallway outside of our room.
Now back to the beginning of this whole story. Of course after being woken up I couldn’t go back to sleep so I ended up going through seven hours of classes on three hours of sleep, and trust me, I wasn’t very happy about it. Anyway it just made me think about a few things.
First off, I understand better than a lot of people that having a roommate is hard, especially when like me you haven’t known any of them before you get stuck living in a room too small for even just one person, let alone two.
Obviously there is a definite need for personal space and time, but at the same time you have to willing to deal with it.
Second off, as cliché as this sounds, compromise, compromise, compromise and respect. As hard to believe as this might seem, no matter how many problems I’ve had with all of my roommates, I have actually gotten close to all of them in some ways. In fact I still talk to all of them on a very regular basis.
No matter who you end up living with, unless it’s just someone that you cannot stand in which case you need to just try and switch roommates, you can usually always find common ground with someone even if it’s just food or TV shows you like.
You just have to remember that what someone else does is what they do and you really can’t change it.

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