<p>Is anyone else really amused/bewildered by the housing lottery based on merit points at the end of the article?</p>
<p>I think a lot of incoming freshmen don’t even think about the process of choosing who to live with the following year (and how socially stressful and awkward it can be). And even the years after that. (Unless you want a single…) At my college (U Virginia) students are forced to choose by October/November who they are living with the next year. It is a bad system but it is a big university that has to accomodate a lot of housing requests, and the off-campus market is really competitive, banking on starting then too, so neither the housing department nor the off campus market will stop the early aggressive signings now…</p>
<p>I had an interesting situation where I lived with my roommate 2nd through 4th year (my first year roommate was great but we had nothing in common), and by 4th year a lot of our boundaries had come down, but that really worked against us and it created a lot of animosity. We were really good friends, but she would just do things that are horror-roommate attributes (eat my food, have late guests when I needed to sleep for my 8am classes, use my stuff and not give it back) because we were friends and “I wouldn’t mind” – it was fine when it was every now and then, but when those things were happening all the time it really was a bummer. You think by 4th year you have moved past all of the roommate drama but for me that was the only year I had any!!! :\ And it had nothing to do with the internet or cellphones. But I understand the points the article made, especially about those helicopter parents…</p>