Survival Tip #1 - Rooms and Roomates

Every college student will always remember his/her first room or roomate. They will remember the nervous feeling in the pit of their stomach while they enter the dark, damp room that will be their living quarters in this slave ship called a dorm (unless you are one of the lucky few who have the money to live in a house, or attend a college that has alot of off campus housing). This is always an exiting and scary time in our life, kind of like a first date, only its for an entire semester and the significant other is a hairy Star Wars buff named Hank. But to ease the pain I will share the experiece I had with my first room/roomates.

     It was a dark and dreary night…not really it was more like a sunny afternoon in a small town in Eastern Idaho called Rexburg. I had drivin down to school with 2 friends with the intent to room with them. Everything seemed perfect…my first semester there would be with 2 good buddies (who in honestly I really didnt know that well but figured it would be cool…). Upon arriving to my new lovely abode…a run down brick building…which actually was really big, especially for the price, I was informed by the manager that we would be sharing our home with a 4th person. We instantly feared the worst. We figured we would end up with the dreaded party killer roomate named hank (mentioned above). It took 3 days of torture before we where finally able to meet our roomate…and I soon found out that my fears where nothing compared to who what was about to step out of that Vogue Silver 2003 Chevy Impala.
         His name was Michael Andam. And this man was a 6′ 3″ black trackstar/football player from the East African country of Ghana. He came equipped with bicepts tricepts and 14 years of martial arts under his belt. As fearful as me and my little (atleast to him) white roomates where, rooming with this guy was definately one of the best experiences I ever had at college. So long story short, I loved the black ninja, who transferred to another school, and my roomates from home and I stopped rooming together and now dont really speak. This all leads me to survival tip #1.

Survival Tip #1 - Keep your friends close but your roomates closer
It is a natural thing to want to room with your best friends. This will somtimes turn out good, but often times spell out disaster! Unless you have basically been joined at the hip for years, dont room with a friend for several reasons.

A) You will find A LOT of flaws in a person by living with them, and this will lead to you getting on eachothers nerves and break apart friendships.

2) If you don’t room with friends, it always gives you a place to go if you want to get out of the house.

D) You have a lot more space if you have roomates who are people that you arent friends with because they will be less inclined to come talk to you, resulting in more alone time to do homework, study, or catch up on some serious nappage…

          Of course there are exceptions to this rule and I see them very often. Best friends will room together and stay best friends, or roomates will meet and become best friends, but just be sure that when choosing a roomate, make sure you can spend 24/7 with this person, or it can destroy a friendship and create alot of drama in the houshold.