Lions, Tigers, and Random Roommates, Oh My!

Everyone hears the horror stories in high school. How so and so had a random roommate who partied until 3 AM every night or who always had a guy in her room or who never left the room. I've heard the stories from people I know, too and to be honest it can be scary. It can be weird moving away from home to live with strangers, but part of it is what you make it.

What no one tells you though is that random roommates can also be the best. They give you a chance to be yourself and meet new people. They push you outside of your comfort zone. My freshman year at UTC I roomed with a girl named Kelli who I had gone to high school with and played volleyball and softball with, but we had two random roommates as well. I will never forget the day that we got room assignments either. It was the day after my birthday, and Hannah and Briley had taken a picture and tweeted me and Kelli telling us they were our new roommates. At first, I was utterly confused and not sure what to think, but later that day and the next few days we exchanged numbers and began to group message and I thought they were pretty cool. Those three made my freshman year great. I wouldn't trade the nights we moved our mattresses into the living room or the roomie dinners and breakfasts (even when Hannah melted all of the icing for the cinnamon rolls) or the adventures for anything.

In late April, I moved out of my dorm and into a small apartment off campus, and again I had new, random roommates. A few months before I had gotten two emails from my new roommates, one from Mary and one from Dakota. I was informed that Mary was currently studying in France, so I did not meet her until August, but Dakota and I made plans to meet and she brought along Amy who was a possible fourth roommate. After our meeting I thought that they seemed nice and that we wouldn't have any problems, but I was scared because I thought my roommates were so perfect and couldn't imagine not living with them. I was nervous because these girls were older and were all in the same sorority, and I worried they wouldn't like me as much as my other roommates. If you would've asked me then if I thought I'd be best friends with these girls I would've said no.

In reality though, Amy, Dakota, and Mary are some of my best friends and we are in the process of deciding where to live next year. We are all different, but we all get along so well. The thing about random roommates is that more than likely you will have something in common, or multiple things if you're lucky. For example, me and Mary both love Friends, Gossip Girl, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. We all love Harry Potter. Once you find something you all like you figure out other things about each other, and sometimes you discover new things you like together. A few weeks ago Dakota wanted to start building puzzles, and now we all love sitting around building puzzles together.

Random roommates can be scary, but they can also turn out to be your best friends. Roommates help you grow or console you when you have breakdowns or go to Walmart with you when you don't want to go alone. They can drive you crazy and might make you mad sometimes, but in the end the right roommates can make college 1000x better.

So thank you God for great roommates, and if you've had a bad roommate, I am deeply sorry.


xoxo,
B