In Which I Hate My Roommate

I received a letter in the mail about two months before I was to move back into my dorm room for my sophomore year in college. The letter, from my university, was a roommate placement form. The roommate I was originally supposed to room with decided to get an apartment off campus, and they now needed to place an incoming freshman in my room. The form asked me generic questions, like whether I preferred to study in a quiet or loud environment, what extra-curricular activities I enjoyed, and if I liked to stay up late or get up early. I filled out the form and dropped it in the mail.

A response came back about a month later, with my newly-assigned roommate's name and phone number. It was suggested that we make contact prior to moving in so that we could coordinate who was bringing what to the room (ie. televisions, mini-fridge, microwave, etc). I called numerous times and left messages, but never actually spoke to him before move-in day. I was confident with the University's ability to assign people with similar personalities and interests, but I was still understandably nervous. After all, I had been wrong before.

The move-in day finally came, and I cautiously opened the door to my dorm room. I was greeted by a thin, lanky guy with blonde hair. He didn't seem all that bad at first, but it didn't take me long at all to find out that he was, in every shape and form, the exact opposite of me. Let me run down the list...

He was a jock, I was a band geek. He liked rap music, I preferred classical. He stayed up late, I went to bed early. He played video games constantly, I hadn't touched a video game system since the Sega Genesis was popular. He would bring a different girl back to the room every weekend, I barely dated. He would put beer in my fridge, I would threaten to turn him in. He would skip classes pretty much daily, I was diligent about attending all my classes. He would randomly drop his pants and change without giving me a warning, I would have to be alone and lock/barricade the door before changing. He was a walking advertisement for Ambercrombie & Fitch, I was always dressed in clothes I found at Goodwill.

Needless to say, we barely spoke.

Because of him, I spent as little time in my room as possible. I would find quieter places to study, watch movies with my friends in their rooms, and basically plan my day out so I wouldn't have to return to my room until the end of the day. I worked an on-campus job at night that let out at 11:00pm, and having class early the next morning I would want to go to bed pretty much right away. There were countless times when I would get back to my room to find him and his friends loudly playing Madden 06, and would ignore the fact that I had even walked in, much less that I had gone to bed.

Midway through the semester, the Resident Assistant on my floor quit and moved out. I applied for the job strictly because, if hired, I would have an entire room all to myself. The minute I found out that I had the job, I was packing my stuff and moving across the hall. I was so excited about getting away from my roommate that I didn't really care that I was going to be the "bad guy" on my floor. After I moved out, I would often have to knock on my ex-roommates door to tell him and his friends to be quiet. I knew they had alcohol, but due to the rules we had as RA's, I could never bust them for it.

College was a couple of years ago, and to this day I'm completely confused as to how the University thought that my old roommate and I would be a good fit. There was absolutely nothing that we had in common, short of our gender. The only reasonable explanation that I can think of is that the mental-midget in the housing department said "Fuck it!", grabbed applicants at random, and hoped for the best.

Since I left college, the only other roommate I've had is The Boss. She is pretty easy to live and get along with... And I'm not just saying that because she reads this. We are very similar in how we like to keep our house (ie. messy), so there are almost never any problems. Her best friend lived with us for a period of time about a year ago, and while that experience wasn't the greatest, nothing will ever top being forced to live with your polar opposite.

Anyone else have a bad roommate experience, past or present? Tell me about it.