Oh for heavens sake. My neighbor is a professional in business for himself. He does not have any online presence at all in his name. In other words, when you google his name, you get NOTHING…no hits at all. Somehow he is managing to survive. I think it’s odd…but whatever.
And then there are all the people who go by an English first name but have a name from their native language on their birth certificates.
They should. Important information shows up there.
Just to be clear, D’s roommate was fine, just non-participatory. S1’s roommate could have been OK, was nice enough, but didn’t shower or do laundry often and wouldn’t “allow” S1’s friends in the room (with the smell, not many wanted to anyway).
Good for you bravely going with a random assignment. D is doing it again sophomore year, S1’s roommates are now particularly chosen. Some adventures are unexpected successes, some are learning experiences.
Sure, it’s weird. I bet your roommate will be a bit quirky. I highly doubt your roommate will be a murderer. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry about it.
My son was assigned a roomie similar to ours with a very foreign sounding name. He was from India if I remember correctly. Probably had enrolled and paid housing deposits at various US Universities and could only attend one:) Another roomie was there on move in day and my son made it out alive without having researched who he was ahead of time:)
Another parent chiming in here . . . my rising high school senior, tech geek, computer programming guru - does not do FB, IG or twitter. And he’s about as law abiding and straight-laced as you will find anywhere (but not in an annoying, preachy way). He does have LinkedIn, but mainly because a dual enrollment engineering class required it.
Back in the 80’s I went far away to college (8+ hours) and didn’t know a soul. Met my roommate the day we moved in, and we are still friends to this day! We did write a couple of letters over the summer prior, though . . .
Maybe OP’s roomie is like me and lives in the Stone Ages - no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. It doesn’t mean their a freak or not all there.
Many HS graduates use the summer before college to travel or do service projects… Maybe the AWOL roomie is trekking in the Himalayas without access to the Internet.
Post #46 I mean “they’re”
Our kids do have some accounts but it is hard to find them and their setting is private, so trying to find them online is quite difficult (I check periodically). They do this on purpose, as their dad keeps reminding them that invisibility is GOOD rather than having to do damage control for over-exposure. Some kids post dumb things that can hinder them in the future, including in job searches and hunts. Both kids are pretty normal and met their room mates at move-in day. They got along OK with their room mates–didn’t become best buddies but friendly.
D1 was in a suite of 5 freshman year, and one of the 5 could not be found on social media and did not communicate with the other 4 in advance. She turned out to be perfectly nice and they all had a great year together. I wouldn’t read into it.
@magnetron, I kind of wish you hadn’t used “on the spectrum” to describe a roommate your son didn’t mix well with. As my brother was autistic, I can only assume the euphemism was meant in a perjorative context, as you aren’t a doctor yet choice a phrase loaded with latent meaning. Please be cognizant of throwing terms out like that. Your son and the roommate didn’t match well. He appeared anti-social. 'Nuff said. Thx. 
:x
@lindyk8 Reading the post, the context could very well be that the roommate “turned out to be” on the spectrum…as in, they found out for a fact. Perhaps magnetron can confirm, but I would not automatically assume that the intent was spiteful.
@bodangles point taken. But either way, I do believe there was a better way to say it. Why not just say he was diagnosed with mild autism? I really hope to never see “on the spectrum” the new euphemism. If you had an autistic relative, I think you would understand it more. I cringed when I read it, although I admit I cringed more when kids called my brother a retard back in the day. I don’t mean it as an attack. It’s probably an oblivious thing. But people just need to be cognizant of how it can sound to others.
That’s quite an assumption.
@bodangles Why is that “quite an assumption”?
Would a person who has a parent with Alzheimer’s be more sensitive to awkward phrasing than someone else? Would a parent who has a child with Down syndrome be more sensitive to awkward phrasing than someone else? Would a person who is dying from cancer be more sensitive to awkward phrasing than someone else?
Whenever something has touched you personally and deeply, when it’s something you live with every day of your life, when you’ve witnessed the ongoing cruel or misguided comments, or been shut out from regular normal stuff, you tend to have a closer connection to it than someone watching from the outside.
There’s no way you could have a profound true understanding of a severely autistic person the way I do, bodangles - unless you work with them, or live with them. You can have empathy, for sure, but there’s no way to intimately know the struggles or hurt.
I have not read the entire thread, but since his email is invalid I think it would be fine to call housing and ask if there was perhaps a typo in the email address. But keep in mind that he also has your email address…
What’s wrong with saying on the spectrum? Genuinely curious. It seems a little kinder than saying Asperger’s or autistic, no?
So sorry @lindyk8, for not knowing, but is “diagnosed with mild autism” a more acceptable term than “on the spectrum” that has been used socially for the past few years? I wouldn’t have used the term if he weren’t diagnosed and didn’t self-identify as such. I did not feel the need to get into the details of what he discussed with either my son or me. It was a primary reason why he chose to come to our state from the Midwest.
Not that I have had to live with anyone with the diagnosis, but I went to engineering school with a number of high functioning autistic kids, including one of my best friends there who is now a scientist at CERN. I do my best not to cavalierly diagnose things outside my bailiwick.
Lindy, you seem to be determined to take offense where none is intended. I see “on the spectrum” used all the time. Why is that not a valid descriptor? And how does that relate to or reflect on your brother, who presumably is profoundly affected (beyond just having trouble with social cues)? I daresay that the offensiveness of the phrase is a new one on me.