Every year, legions of new college students descend on their campuses, many destined for at least one year in a dormitory. Some colleges match roommates at random, refusing to reveal the identities of the pair to each other until they arrive at school, while others allow incoming students to choose their first-year roommates and decide to live together. Those schools that force randomized matching of roommates also have a minimum amount of time that you must wait to request a new roommate, as so many people encounter culture shock when they come to a new school and run into people with different ethics and beliefs (and study habits) than the ones that they have that many people would request changes during that very first weekend. Because there are many different personality types, it follows that people would mesh together in different ways as well. As a result, there are quite a few different types of roommates out there, and different ways to deal with each one.
Messy Marvin. Many people know what is like to fight, tooth and nail, with a parent who wants us to keep our rooms neater than they want to. They don’t always like picking up their dirty clothes, and they certainly don’t always like making their beds (unless they have some carefully diagnosed form of OCD). When people move into a dorm room, though, they learn really quickly how important it is to keep things neat. For one thing, they and their roommates are now living in a room that is probably smaller than the bedroom they had all to themselves back home. In that space they have two closets, two desks, two dressers, and two beds. That means that there is just about no room to have a mess if you want to be functional at all. However, too many college freshmen don’t understand that, and they end up designating a corner of the room as the laundry hamper and keeping the empty pizza boxes and soda cans somewhere near the trash bin. If they are a neat person, having Messy Marvin as a roommate can be frustrating, because they have learned the virtues of neatness, but they’re still having to step over his boxer shorts to get to their desk. This can affect them in one of two ways – they may get lazy and start living like him, or they may spend all of their time with their anger at a low boil. The way they respond is up to them, but if they are direct about the fact that they have to share the same room, the message should get across.
Captain Kegger. Some people like to go to bed by 10:00 on school nights, but their roommate likes to go out at 10:00 – on school nights. They’ve just finished writing a freshman English paper on Dadaism, printed it out, and set it on their desk. Then, their roommate bursts in with a group of friends, one of whom spills his open drink on their paper – and their keyboard. People run in and out of their dorm room at all hours of the night, led by their roommate who, to say the least, is enjoying the freedom of the college experience. This will affect their sanity fairly quickly, because they’ll have just settled into bed when a party breaks out in the room. They may find their roommate doing some illegal things in their room that they do not find acceptable. If they sit down with their roommate, on the first day they meet, and set some boundaries for one another, they are more likely to avoid this frustration, because each of them will know where the other stands. This doesn’t mean that they won’t ever get cross with their roommate, or he won’t be drunk at 1:00 in the morning before their marketing final, but it might mean that he will be a little quieter. Plus – if he’s doing all that partying in the week, he’ll fail out of school pretty quickly.
The Noisy Man. This type of roommate can rub people raw really quickly, particularly if they like their sleep, or if they're an introvert. He can only study if the television is blaring through the music pulsing out of his iPod. If they like to have their study area nice and quiet, this will be annoying. He's not quite as annoying as Captain Kegger, because he saves his partying for the weekend, but when he talks on the telephone, they can hear him a mile away. When it's time to go to sleep, he ends up sawing logs all night, because his mouth lolls wide open and he snores. Yes, they can buy a set of earplugs to make things better, but if they're quiet and he's loud, there is not very much that they can do, because these are simple instances of personality. The good news is that this is preparing them for living with a spouse who has different noise tolerances than them; the bad news is that, if they can't take it, they're looking forward to a semester, or even a year, of aggravation.
Mr. Hometown. This roommate has never really left high school behind. After all, he lettered in four sports and has been dating the head cheerleader since they were both in tenth grade, and now they are going to be together forever. The bonus with this sort of roommate is that, on the weekends, his roommate have the place to himself, because he's headed home to spend the weekend with his girlfriend, back at home. Another bonus is that he's more likely to be neat than those who cut all ties with the homeland; if he has already developed the discipline to manage a long-distance relationship, then he has the discipline to keep his bed made and his clothes put away. He might even deliver papers to class for his roommate, if they have that same 8 AM English class and he’s up all night finishing that essay.
Captain Mooch. It might start when he asks to borrow $5 to eat at the dining hall one day. Then it might take the form of his roommate’s beer (or soda) disappearing. Then they leftover pizza might vanish one night. Or every night. Then his roommate might come home and find him wearing his newest rugby shirt. There is a mooch living in the room – and there's no way around it. His roommate gets angry when he finds that his leftovers are gone, or that the last iced latte from Starbucks is gone – again – but he hates to say something, because other than that, he's a really good guy, and he's at school on financial aid. But his roommate just can't help remembering each and every thing that disappears.
One thing to consider when moving off to college for the first time is that the more flexible one can be, the easier it will be to get along with your roommate. If the student heading off to school doesn’t drink alcohol, he needs to be prepared for the fact that his roommate will, even though he may be younger than the legal limit. It's one thing to express a preference about smoking, but that is a habit that many students start during their first year in college – and so those questionnaires do not really help. Sex can be another sticking point between roommates; even if both roommates are sexually active, the simple fact is that they don't have much room to deal with, and if one of them wants to have a special friend over for the night, that can make things uncomfortable for the other roommate, who may be sleeping mere feet away from an amorous couple. These are boundaries that the two of them need to set together, in an honest conversation.
If I had to choose one of these, I would choose Mr. Hometown, because despite the fact that people who are already content are annoying, at least he would be gone a lot. As for the rest of these, the key is to set limits right when you move in together – and then keep to them. The clearer you are about your own expectations, the likelier you are to have a great year – and a new friend.
Works Cited
McKeon, Jennie. “5 Types of Roommates.” My Everyzine. Web. Retrieved 2 April 2012 from
http://myeveryzine.com/story/5-types-roommates
Morris, Jeannine. “Roommates You Don't Want.” Collegebound Network. Web. Retrieved 2 April
2012 from http://www.collegebound.net/content/article/roommates-you-dont-
want/2085/
Namkung, Victoria. “The 5 Worst Types of Roommates.” Huffington Post 3 October 2009. Web.
Retrieved 2 April 2012 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victoria-namkung/the-5-
worst-types-of-room_b_302955.html
“The 7 Kinds of Roommates.” College Humor 17 July 2009. Web. Retrieved 2 April 2012 from
http://www.collegehumor.com/article/5267364/the-7-kinds-of-roommates
