Okay, great; you did it! You made it into your dream college, you’ve committed to a place that you’ll spend the next 4 years of your life at, finally. The weight is off your chest, and you can stop worrying, right? Well, if you read the title, you know that this is not the truth. 

Back in the olden days, unless you knew someone who was also going to your school, your roommate was probably random. But nowadays, in our age of social media, finding a roommate is a different process. Many schools have a page for incoming students looking for a stranger to share 180 sq. ft. with. This complicates the process; how does something that was so simple less than 20 years ago become a match-making gamble? 

To find a roommate, ideally, you’re looking for someone who has similar interests to you, who’s not messy, and who’s cool. Keeping that in mind, you go to your school’s page, you’re met with a wall of faces staring at you. Not knowing what to look for, you start at the top. Going into your first person, it already feels like a dating profile. How much can you really find out about someone from 5 photos and a paragraph-long bio? But you remember your checklist. Ok, similar interests: for me, theater (but going to Purchase; that’s also everyone’s interest). When you look, though, everyone lists their interests as Movies, Music, and Books. What kind of movies? What kind of music? We’ll never know. These aren’t interested; these are pieces of media that you interact with. Everyone likes these things. An interest would be rock climbing, brutalist architecture or playing the guitar (which half of everyone has a picture of them playing the guitar, we can’t all play the guitar). Books can not be your interest. Ok, interests were a bust, and nobody’s gonna admit to being messy, so the only thing I have to go off on is if I personally think these people are cool. 

So you find some people you think are cool enough to be roommates, and you move to stage two: DMing. Starting off can feel like entering a war zone. What if I say the wrong thing? Should I start with: Hi, Hello, Waz up, wsg? Maybe I should just sit and hope they DM me first. You muster up the courage to send a message, making sure to add emojis to keep a level of friendliness, and what’s the worst that can happen? They don’t respond? 

Now here’s the part that really matters: you start talking. You ask each other questions about “Oh, what’s your major?” “Oh wow, that’s so cool. What got you into that?” Maybe you get past the first rounds of getting acquainted, and you can ask, “What are you into?” “What extracurriculars do you do at school?” You can start to learn fun facts about each other. This guy and I talked about his family in Ireland for like 5 minutes. But no matter how many fun facts I collect, I don’t actually know what this guy is like. 

You finally meet your roommate. It’s move-in day. You see your roommate for the first time in person; you know a handful of fun facts about them, so you kinda know them, but you kinda don’t. You start to realize that, even though you talked about color schemes, your decor doesn’t match at all. Actually, they clash. It’s a few weeks in, and although they swore they weren’t messy, you can see drinks left around, clothes on the floor, and somehow a stain on your carpet. You can plan out as much as you want in your mind, but you can never predict what is going to happen. 

People place too much importance on their roommate. Your roommate will not make or break your college experience. Your roommate could be your best friend or your opp. This person will only be your roommate for one year, and if you have a problem, you can request to switch rooms. People are so worried about whether they’ll have friends or whether nobody will think they’re cool, but this is what everyone is thinking. When everyone is so nervous about making friends, it actually becomes easier to make them because everyone has the same concern. 

 I’m going random. I’ve always hated texting; I’ve never been able to keep long-distance relationships. I’d rather just meet someone in person and get to know them than try to pin down the perfect roommate and learn everything about them. Getting to know someone in person, for me at least, will always be easier. Getting to know your roommate online puts you in this in-between state where you kinda know them but have never met them in person, creating an awkward experience for everyone involved. I’ll leave it up to the universe, and whoever I get, I know it’ll be a new experience for me, and I’m sure, whoever I get, we’ll find a way to have a great time.