Trying to change roommates, need advice!

plinko
Sat, 23 Oct 2004 03:27:31 +0000

I am trying to change roommates and move into a different residence hall because I don’t really click well with the people on my floor, and I don’t really have any common ground them. I saw my RD, and he gave me a list of openings to choose a new roommate from. I went to each of these rooms to meet with these potential roommates, and none of them was what I’m looking for, but then I found a 8-person suite that looked pretty good. My roommate there would be a Japenese exchange student, but the other guys in the suite (at least the ones that were there when I saw it) seemed pretty cool and they seemed like the kind of guys I would want to hang out with and become friends with. The problem is, the roommate (the Japanese guy) said that a Japenese friend of his was on the waiting list before me, and that he would probably take the room. So I told my RD about this, and he e-mailed me the next day and said that “someone (not necessarily that friend) is coming to look at the room today, I’ll let you know what the final verdict is”. Then 2 days later the RD tells me that the room is mine if I want it, so I go back there - and the Japanese guy says that his friend is still trying to move in, but he doesn’t know for sure yet. I then talked with a couple of the other guys in the suite about moving in, and they said that the guys there (expect possibly the Japenese guy) had known each other for 2 years, and that it might not work out for me. So I told them I’m not interested, thanks anyway, and it looked like that was that.

Well today I talked to the RA on my floor and told her all this, and she said that they (the roommate and the guys in that suite) were just making this stuff up because they already had their little “community”, and they weren’t open to having a new guy move in, but that eventually they would warm up to me and I would become close with those guys, and that I have to do this if I’m unhappy with my current situation, and that it would work out, just do it! But I really don’t know if that’s how it is in college when you change roommates a month into the year, and move into a suite with 6-7 guys who’ve already formed a bond during the last month or however long they’ve known each other. Is my RA right? If I move in to the suite, will the other guys eventually “accept” me and include me in their activities and stuff and let me be a part of their group? Or is this something that definetely won’t work out based on what I said above? Keep in mind that I’m not really worried about having a Japanese exhange student as my roommate in this suite, since I would want to hang around the other guys most of the time, and besides one or two of the guys there said that this roommate isn’t there a lot of the time because he does a lot of international stuff. FYI I’m a junior transfer student at UCSB, so I don’t really know a lot about how social dynamics and stuff like that works in the dorms, especially in a situation like this. Please give me advice on this, I’d really appreciate it!