<p>my to-be roommate is frustrating…we’ve been e-mailing each other back and forth for a couple weeks, and she volunteers basically nothing other than the flat reply to the exact question i ask her. </p>
<p>it’s like, hello, how am i supposed to get to know you? i’ve talked to random people off of facebook from the school that i’m going to more than her.
the only thing i know about her is her name, her state, and that she went to mexico this summer. wow, so useful. </p>
<p>i asked her if she had myspace/facebook and she has yet to get back to me. hopefully she does and it’ll give me a little more insight, haha.</p>
<p>no one’s mentioned this, but also, when you do start to bring up ground rules for the room, don’t state them as “don’t” for your roomate, but more of “things you prefer”. For instance, to go back to the OPs the “dont expect to entertain friends” is obviously a really **<strong><em>y way of saying “I’d really like to have our room be a place where I can study, and I prefer to study with as few distractions as possible.” This way, your roommate can see it as something to do that makes you happier as opposed to an authoritative command from some </em></strong> she just met.</p>
<p>You also have to be willing to compromise. Maybe in exchange for no friends visiting on weekdays, you promise to leave the room during the day on the weekend if you’re going to do work, or vice versa.</p>
<p>One of my friends summed good roommate relations best. If both of you are willing to take turns being the other’s little ***** from time to time, things will work out great. It’s when the balance of who’s the ***** and who’s in charge is disrupted that problems arise.</p>
<p>It might help to figure out who is bringing what shared items; ie fridge, microwave, a rug perhaps, toilet paper, tissues, lamps, cleaning supplies etc.</p>
<p>I think my roommate and I first started talking on facebook, so we could see each other’s interests, which helped. We both love music and sing soprano so we had a lot of basic stuff in common to talk about. But we also pretty quickly moved into “I have x to bring, what do you have? What else do you think we need so we can split up getting it?”</p>
<p>It wasn’t until we’d moved in (but before classes started) that we got into rules. Actually we only had one ground rule: Don’t do stupid s*** in my room. This may too vague and too offensive for some people, but it’s worked incredibly well for us. We’re rooming together again this year. :)</p>
<p>My sophomore year roomate and I picked each other…great until September, when she announced that her new boyfriend would be visiting every other week and I would be kicked out. She offered that she would let me kick her out on the other weekends…but that really didn’t do anything for me since I had no reason for privacy. Fortunately they broke up by October.</p>
<p>One of the first questions my D’s new roommate asked on facebook was what size shoe she wore. My D does not want to share shoes or clothes, so I told her that this was the perfect time to let her roommate know that. She said she didn’t want to come off as being selfish and didn’t say anything, but she knows that she is going to have to address this issue right when they move in or it will cause big problems.</p>
<p>I haven’t read all of the posts, but I agree with just introducing yourself in that first email/phone call/facebook message. That’s what I did with my roommate and we got off to a great start. We just talked about things like our majors, hobbies, favorite shows, books, etc. Room preferences should come up after you move in. Luckily, for me I didn’t have to discuss that. Since my roommate and I were so similar, we just knew when to respect each others privacy.</p>
<p>I think that you should be up front with some preferences that are really important. Then if it looks like it isn’t going to work out, you can see if you can get a new roomie.</p>
<p>My first roommate and I just talked casually and we thought we’d get along great. We liked each other as people, but soon found out that we didn’t work well together as roommates. I like to get to bed early and wake up early and she liked to go to bed late and get up late. She’d keep me up every night studying and I’d wake her up every morning when I had to go to class. We spent two months without sleep because it took us so long to get our roommate request form through. If we had known beforehand we might’ve been able to get our forms in earlier and gotten more sleep.</p>
<p>I think it’s a good idea to discuss rooming preferences ahead of time, especially if it’s a bunch of people in a suite or quad, because then you can figure out who’s rooming with whom. My freshman year, we had nine girls for three doubles and three singles. By figuring out who liked music while studying, who slept late, who needed natural light, who wanted roommates, who didn’t, and other interests and quirks, we were able to arrange rooming so that everyone was happy with their roommate. Just be honest.</p>
<p>hahahha on my housing application it asked me to say a few things about me and I listed my shoe size. hey, she may have a good collection and i do. i think it works.
but i think its important to let the roomie know about what time your early classes are, what time you go to bed, that sort of thing.
the girl, however, who kicked you out every weekend? omg, i would not have done that. you (or your parents) pay a lot of money for that dorm…ughh that must have been annoying. luckily they broke up! I hope you had numerous boys over and kiccked her out… pay backs a *****!</p>
<p>Damn, I didn’t know that people even thought about this kind of stuff. The habits of my roommate have never even crossed my mind. As long as they respect my property, time, and boundaries I have never had any problems. But, I’ve spent weeks at Boy’s State/Westpoint/Naval Academy bunking in some of the smallest rooms with the weirdest guys you will ever meet. I have found that the best roommate is one that you can be freinds with, despite how often they want to take showers. I usually start by intoducing myself and just going through the usual small talk. Just stay conservative in what you say until you can get a feel for their beliefs and habits.</p>
<p>Also don’t say “Hey my mom wants a key to the room so she can drop by and bring me stuff and clean for me…[a few minutes later]…OMG my mom throws away EVERYTHING when she cleans. She threw away our W-2 forms, household bills, etc. Nothing is safe in her cleaning path!”</p>
<p>Or “I hope you don’t mind a light in the room at night because I’m afraid of the dark”</p>