<p>What is reasonable…I’d love everyone’s opinion. My d and a couple of her suitemates tend to do their homework after dinner until 9 or 10 in the evening and then like to watch TV or listen to music. If they need to pull all-nighters, they relocate to one of the study lounges…which are designated quiet areas with wireless internet. There are at least two study lounges on each floor of their dorm. One is literally 5 doors down from my d’s room. One roommate tends to come in late (10ish), begins her homework at that time and insists on doing it in the room. She expects total silence and says moving to the study room is too much trouble. </p>
<p>She and my d have had words over this. And to be honest, my d is a very direct person who doesn’t mince words when things are bothering her. I’m trying to counsel my d so that the relationship isn’t irreparably damaged. I’ve told her to be patient and make sure something else isn’t bothering her roommate. But I honestly feel quiet areas and libraries are the place for extreme focus in studying and that dorm rooms are places where our kids actually ‘live’. </p>
<p>I’d like to know if we are incorrect about this…so give it to me straight.</p>
<p>PS…my d indicated on her dorm contract that she did homework with music and preferred to study for exams outside of the room (library), so her preferences were not a secret.</p>
<p>I think dorm space is for living, and doing homework. If one of the suitemates disagrees with the rules established by the other suitemates, then they should try to workout a compromise. Perhaps if this young lady needs to study after 10pm, lets say 3x/week, twice per week she could leave for a quiet study area, and once per week she could have the room and those not studying could watch tv in a lounge, or stay and just keep it on the quiet side, without needing to have it so quiet that one could hear a pin drop!</p>
<p>Our son has a different problem. He really was firm, but polite when he moved in and certain situations came up. He let his roommate know that his family pays for half of the room, and that he will not be kicked out of his room for his roommate to entertain a guest for the night. My son compromises when his roommate brings in friends on occasion, and my son is not comfortable with the situation, he just leaves. He also told his roommate what his schedule is, so his roommate generally knows when my son won’t be around. They seem to really respect each other and it has worked out even though they lead very seperate social lives. So far, so good.</p>
<p>I think that some compromise is necessary, but that it is necessary to take into account what type of computer the late studier owns.</p>
<p>If it’s a desktop, and if the late studier needs to do work that requires a computer, she can’t really move to a study lounge, can she? But if she has a laptop, then I think she’s being stubborn by not moving to the study lounge.</p>
<p>Could you offer to buy her a set of ear plugs? </p>
<p>Was she part of this decision, and did she agree with it up front? If it’s a suite, couldn’t the rest of the girls hang out outside of the room? I hate the thought that she might be doing this just to be ornery – could it be that she really does need to study? Some college majors do require constant work to keep up, and having to move out of her dorm room to do what she came to college for in the first place seems a bit unfair.</p>
<p>Good point about what type of computer the girl has. If she has a laptop then I’d say “majority rules” and she should go to the lounge. Good for your daughter that she is direct in communicating with the suitemate. This is a touchy situation but it’s better to confront it and have an intense conversation than to let resentment fester and it blows up into a huge fight.</p>
<p>The roommate has a laptop and the study lounge a few doors down (and rest of the dorm) has wireless internet access as well as jacks. I know both girls were required to be specific about their study habits on their contracts; so I told my d she needs to make sure she is doing exactly as she agreed on her end of the deal, which she assures me she is doing. Since their room is located so close to the quiet zone on their floor, things are already pretty toned down in that area most of the time anyway. </p>
<p>The roommate’s issue is… when she comes in to do homework, she wants the music off, the tv off and everyone to be quiet. Which would be great except that she chooses to socialize outside the dorm every night until 10 p.m. and then comes home to start homework…which is about the time everyone else is finishing theirs and wanting to do a little fun winding down. My d is in compromise mode, but the roommate is not going along with it at this time. This JUST cropped up as a major issue, so I wonder if something else isn’t going on with the roommate. My d said she’ll wait it out to see if the storm will pass…and if need be talk to the RA to make sure they both had compatible preferences on their dorm contract. </p>
<p>I know my d has spent many, many hours in the study lounge so the desk light wouldn’t disturb her roommmate. I even had a nice little online chat with her one morning at 2 a.m. when she was studying for a chem test…lol! So I don’t think she is being discourteous. It may be just a matter of three people with one common schedule in conflict with one person who is on an entirely different schedule…but there also may be some other emotional issue at the root of this.</p>
<p>btw PrimetimeMom - I think, unfortunately, the blowup has occurred. But I had a feeling it was coming. My d has been unnaturally flexible for two solid months (constantly rearranging the room to acommodate the rm, removing her belongings to accommodate the rm’s, removing herself from the room to accommodate the rm, etc…) It is not in my d’s nature to be so passive, so I worried that something would give…and it finally did. I wish I could be more specific, but you never know who reads these message boards… My luck, the rm does…ha!</p>
<p>ldmom, It sounds like your D is doing all of the compromising, although I am sure that there are 2 sides of every story, and I understand that you cannot get more specific here. If the rm is socializing until 10 and then wants everyone on her schedule without compromise, that is just very unreasonable. I think that she needs see that it is unreasonable. If she is still not willing to bend, or change in any way then perhaps an RA becomes necessary.</p>
<p>ldmom06,
Glad to hear that your D is confronting the situation rather than ignoring it. My S had a similar problem freshman year with his roommate, who would be busy typing papers in the room at 3 a.m. when my S had a lab the “next” morning at 8 a.m. My S would frequently oversleep the lab. I wonder why! What was incredible to me is that my S admitted that he never asked his roommate to please type in the lounge on the floor. Why? Because he didn’t want to compromise on his end if the need ever arose! (There were computers available in the lounge.) Agreed that your D needs to take the next step and speak to the RA about what is the best way to handle this issue. Don’t let it fester!</p>
<p>ldmom06, I also think that the dorm is for living – especially since there are designated study areas nearby, and your D’s preferences were made clear. I think talking to the RA is the way to go. I’m sorry to hear about her difficulty, but this sounds like a bit of a power/control issue on the part of the roommate. I think that all your daughter can do is to work with the suitemates and RA to come to some agreement, but I do think the roomie is out of line. Good luck!</p>
<p>My d is in the same situation…she has 8 a.m. classes. She tries to get homework/studying completed and manage to have a little bit of fun before she hits the sack around midnight. It’s would be such a grind if she had to do three or four hours of homework and then lay silently in her bed reading a book until she falls asleep…just to accommodate the r/m’s schedule. There is a tv room, and she does try to make use of it as much as possible. But sometimes a person just wants to mellow out in their own room listening to their own Chrissie Hynde/Pretenders album…ya know? </p>
<p>I do think there is a control thing going on…I got that feeling from the beginning when she was asked to rearrange her side of the room to suit the r/m during week one of school.</p>
<p>ldmom06, it occurred to me that if your daughter goes to the RA, she might end up on the losing side.</p>
<p>The problem is that if the dorm has designated quiet hours, they are likely to be the late-night hours. Thus, the roommate who wants quiet during those hours might win even though the majority opposes her.</p>
<p>marian, About the “quiet hours”, you have a good point, but I know that at the school my is in that quiet hours do not begin at 10pm. They begin somewhere around 1:00am, I believe, during the week. Each dorm probably has different hours, and that would be something to investigate. OP’s D has a good point about filling out the residence life survey as accurately as possible.</p>
<p>Having had three Ds now go through living at dorms at three different colleges, I have to say that what is filled out on res life surveys, and what ends up being the actual reality, is almost always different. Kids do not always fill out those surveys honestly, and for many kids, when they actually get to college and are living in a dorm, their habits and behavior change from what it was while living at home.</p>
<p>Living with a roommate will always require compromises from EVERYone. There will always be annoyances, there will always be times when one roomie makes too much noise while the other is trying to study; or will come in late, or drunk, or both; there will be ‘sexile’ issues; eating each others’ food or ‘borrowing’ each others’ clothes. The only certainty when living with a roommate is that there will, at some point or another, be conflict. </p>
<p>It’s unreasonable for your D’s roommate to expect the others in the suite to be quiet ALL the time from 10 P.M. on, and it’s also unreasonable for your D and her friends to expect the roommate in question to leave the suite ALL the time to do her work, even if she arrives home after 10. They need to discuss the issue and maybe work out some kind of schedule if this is a regular occurrence, so that all of them have the opportunity to have time doing what THEY want to in their own room. </p>
<p>These issues are always best settled without intervention of the R.A., if possible. I’d also check and see what the dorm’s quiet hours/study hours rules are and see if they impact this situation at all. Best of luck to her.</p>
<p>I don’t know, I see where you’re daughter is coming from and it sucks to be in her shoes. I had the same thing happen during college. I love to study with music on and in my own room. I personally can’t stand the library or ‘study’ lounges. I get distracted by every little noise in them. My roommates could be as loud as they wanted when I was studying, as long as they weren’t bugging me… but I wasn’t leaving to go to the library or the study areas. I did occasionally pick up my laptop and go to a friends house to work there because my roommates were being overly obnoxious.</p>
<p>My other roommate wanted it completely silent with no noise what so ever. Not even a peep. She also didn’t like study lounges or the library, partly because she was an art major and she constantly needed different supplies and things like that. And also because she said study lounges are very distracting with people coming in and out and libraries are distracting with people walking by her. Which I agreed with, and whenever she needed our room to study I would either go to a friends apartment/house or be quiet in my room out of respect to her. </p>
<p>and it’s been my experience in college that most people do there homework at 10pm. I know I had night classes and clubs in the evenings and didn’t get home till 10pm most nights. maybe your daugther and her friends could try doing there’s a little bit later and invest in a pair of headphones to listen to music with.</p>
<p>I think your daughter should find out exactly ‘why’ she doesn’t want to use the study lounges. If it’s because of the same reason I mentioned above, I don’t blame her. I think in the end a lot of times you wind up with more distractions than you do in your own quiet room… but that’s just my opinion.</p>
<p>Compromise usually is the better tactic to take in these situations. But it seems to me that any college has a variety of places to study, but each student really only has his/her own dorm room for living. If the girls could work out some kind of schedule, that’s great, but I think the room should be more for downtime and relaxing with friends.</p>
<p>see, i’m oppisate from that. i did all of my downtime and my relaxing with friends away from my room. the only thing I did in the room was study and eat (occasionally) and every once and awhile I’d have a friend over to watch a movie if i didn’t have any homework to do. I also had friends over for study groups and stuff like that at my room/apartment. I very rarely sat around and hung out with my roommates or anything like that… actually we didn’t really do anything together outside of living together. it was basically just my sleeping quarters used for studying as well. </p>
<p>My roommates on the other hand did everything at home and seemed to never leave the room unless it was for class… and had absolutely no social lives… which I always found a bit odd since it’s college and they should be meeting people and trying new things Well, I guess it’s not like that for everyone I remember one time i left for class at 745 am, and i came home to drop off some stuff at about 1:30 and my roommates were sitting there watching a movie. i then went to work and came home at 5:30, and they were still sitting there watching movies. i went to my night class, went to two meetings afterwords, came home at 10, and they were still sitting there watching movies. and there was six DVD cases out all over the floor. I couldn’t even tell you how many times that happened. You’d think they’d get tired of watching the same movie over and over. I think second semester of senior year they watched mean girls almost every day for a month.</p>
<p>After having a horrid university-assigned roommate my freshman year, I’m in that other camp that says “cut your losses, life’s too short.” This all sounds very familiar, rigid lifestyle habits, one-sided compromises, someone who’s a drag to have around, just difficult for the sake of it (and horrendous personal hygiene that I won’t get into here). Mine was an only child who had been used to being catered to by the folks. Sure, conflicts arise with roommates from time-to-time, but there’s also general incompatibility that sometimes is best solved by change. Involving the RA probably will compound the problem rather than produce any lasting solution. Sounds like your D. and her suitemates are on the same page and she’s the odd man out, so-to-speak. Have they sat down with the roommate and discussed the possibility of her switching out at the semester? Finding a new room that works for her, living with someone who shares her inflexible schedule, or isn’t bothered by having to accommodate it? If she doesn’t like the idea, perhaps she just might find a way to get along with other people, or open up about what’s really going on with her. I found that being a new freshman was stressful enough, but that living with a roommate (not chosen by me) with irreconcilable differences was unnecessary. I never involved the RA, just handled it myself. I found another girl on my floor equally mismatched and miserable with her roommates and we moved into a new room together after our first set of finals. It made all the difference in the world and we had an awesome 2nd semester.</p>
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