<p>Alright, so I’m a first-year student (technically a sophomore because of AP credits) in college, and I’m female.</p>
<p>Last year, towards the end of my senior year of high school, I used a roommate matching service on Facebook. One of my matches was with a certain girl, and I’ll call her Imogen (that’s not her real name- I’m just using a different one for the sake of privacy). It seemed like Imogen and I had a lot in common. We agreed to room with each other. We messaged each other on Facebook throughout the summer, and found out that we had even more in common than we thought.</p>
<p>So, it’s move-in day, and I can already tell that she’s a pushy, dominant person, despite the fact that she’s generally pretty nice. She arrived before move-in technically was supposed to start, and she purposely spread her stuff out everywhere so she would have the best of everything- the best dresser (mine’s right by the door, so if the door opens, I get hit) and the desk she wanted. Luckily, we hadn’t bunked the beds yet, so she hadn’t chosen which bed she wanted yet. Eventually, I came back into the room with my mom, and Imogen and her parents were there. She seemed nice and everything, but since I don’t have much of a backbone (I’m still working on it!), my mom insisted that I get the bottom bunk because I “sleepwalk” sometimes (even though I haven’t in years). To this day, she still complains about her stupid top bunk even though she had first pick over everything else :/</p>
<p>For the first week of school, we were inseparable. We became good friends really quickly, and we went everywhere together. Even when her immature boyfriend (now her ex) came to visit her, we would all hang out and have fun. This all went on for a few weeks, and then she started hanging out with different people, and pretty much ditched me. I tried not to take it personally, because I know that roommates can’t always be best friends. I’m not a particularly needy person anyway, so I spent more time in our floor’s lounge making new friends, while she secluded herself or hung out with a select few.</p>
<p>What I hadn’t mentioned before was that her boyfriend (although he’s now her ex) was from the same town that she lived in before university. Eventually, she saw how incredibly controlling and immature he was, so she broke up with him. Well, before she broke up with him, things were going pretty well. We both gave each other space, and she wasn’t in our room all of the time. She went back home either every weekend or every other weekend to visit her boyfriend.</p>
<p>Well, a while after the break-up (probably a month to two months), she started seeing another guy (I’ll call him Drew) even though they weren’t official yet. It started out as something that was kind of innocent- they weren’t really obnoxious, and they weren’t suffocating me. I still had some space and quiet time, albeit not as much. I understood, because it’s her room too. Eventually, the two of them started to become more serious (even before they were official), and they were kissing/making out very loudly…and it was grossing me out. Drew is a very nice guy, though, and he is never rude to me. He’s never passive-aggressive about me being in the room at the same time. He even makes conversation with me when the two of them are just watching TV or something.</p>
<p>So, now that I’ve shared the background information (sorry it was so long), I can finally share my dilemma…</p>
<p>Being a biochemistry major who is taking advanced classes that I placed into, I usually have a pretty heavy homework load, and I have to study a lot too. It is the end of winter break right now, and I know that next semester is only going to be worse, because I have more credit hours. My roommate is another science major, but she isn’t really at my level of classes yet (not trying to be mean). Because of this, she doesn’t spend as much time studying, which is fine- I get it. The problem is, Imogen has her boyfriend, Drew in there a LOT. It’s starting to feel like I can’t even be in my own room anymore. I didn’t always study in my room last semester, but now that it’s winter, I’m not going to be walking all the way across campus to the library every time I want to do homework. During finals week, they were literally in there every spare minute they had. She only had two finals that were on Monday and Friday, while I had a final on Monday, a final on Tuesday, and a final on Wednesday. I always had to go elsewhere to study. I know she was doing it intentionally (she wasn’t oblivious) because Drew would say something like, “Oh, I feel so bad kicking her out,” and Imogen would say, “Oh no, it’s fine- she doesn’t care.” Hmph.</p>
<p>The day before my last final, I was in a position where I had to cram everything I learned into one day (it was an “exploratory” class that didn’t count for anything, and I had my Orgo final the day before…), so I was literally studying every moment after my Organic Chemistry final. I left my room for a while to get some lunch with friends, fully intending to get back to studying when I returned to my room. Well, as expected, Imogen and Drew were in there, watching TV loudly. Imogen knows that I can’t study with noise, and I was really fed up with everything, so I purposely acted kind of cold towards them. Not rude- just not outgoing or very friendly. I sent her a polite but to-the-point text message later, and she felt bad and gave me some space in our room.</p>
<p>I also had an incident with my Christmas lights. My mom got them for me as a gift, and she acted like they were OURS and insisted that SHE put them up. She even suggested that she might take some home with her when she was going to for break. What the heck?</p>
<p>So…obviously, it’s winter break, and things can change. From my observations, it seems like she’s not malicious, but she “sees the cracks” and takes advantage of it. I just wish I had more of a backbone. If I start having to deal with this next semester again, how should I confront her?</p>
<p>I am so sorry that this post is practically an essay. I even left out some details, so if you need clarification, I can explain things further.</p>