Living With A Roommate

Quite possibly one of the scariest things about starting college is finding out who you will be living with for the next nine months, and whether or not you will get along with them. In this post, I will be discussing how to get along with your roommate, how to be a good roommate yourself, and what you can do to improve the relationship with your roommate if needed.

I met my roommate on the Loyola 2018 Facebook page way back in February. She contacted me and we seemed to have a lot in common. We decided to officially meet here at Loyola Weekend in March, which is an open house for accepted students. We immediately became friends, and still to this day have not had any problems yet! (We even have matching bedding!)

Where finding a roommate before actually moving in might be comforting, going random is a popular and often successful way of going about the roommate choosing process. If you go random, you will find out the name and email of your roommate at a much closer date to move in day, and it is unlikely that you will meet before you move in. This method may be scary, but it is rare that two roommates do not get along and chances are, they will be very nice and it could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship!

There are many things you can do to ensure that you are being a good roommate, whether you just have one roommate or two or three. For starters, make sure you keep your side of the room clean, and often share the cleaning responsibility of shared space. Another important thing to do is to make sure you communicate with your roommate with things such as bringing guests into the room and what not. It is important that your roommate is okay with the guest being there, because after all, it is their space just as much as it is yours.

If you do end up having any sort of issue or problem with your roommate, don’t worry! There are things you can do to help sort it out to make living easy again. The first step in a roommate conflict is to talk it out with your roommate. Expressing the wants and needs of each person involved can often help solve the problem before anything bad actually occurs. If the problem is not resolved by talking it out, the next step would be to talk to your floor’s resident assistant (RA). Your RA will consult the roommate agreement forms both roommates fill out together at the beginning of the semester and will try to help sort it out with you. In a worst-case scenario where the issue cannot be resolved, it is possible to switch, but ONLY if the issue will absolutely make living with one another a true travesty.

Ultimately, living with a roommate is not as scary as it may seem. They could even end up being your best friend! Just keep up your half of being a good roommate, and everything should be smooth sailing! ☺