Poll: Do you like living with roommates or not?

[Qwurty2.0]

So I'm coming to the end of my second semester of college and have decided that I absolutely hate sharing my room with someone I am not intimately familiar with.

I a reasonably socially person, but like everyone I need time to recharge. I ted to feel slightly anxious and self-conscious when my roommate is in my room. It's not him personally, but I just learned I don't like sharing my space (or atleast, not my bedroom).

My only positive is that next year I made sure to get into a suite where all four occupants get their own room.

So escapist, do you not like living with another person, or could you care less?

Spoiler: Completely unrelated: it's early and I'm kinda derpy, so here's a pic to brighten your morning, fellow escapists.

 

[Artina89]

It all depends on the person. For example, the people I lived with in my final year at university were the best roommates I could ever ask for. We all did different subjects (I was studying Biochemistry and chemistry, and the rest of my roommates were studying things such as German and history, art history, Spanish/Russian/French and Chinese) and as a result we all kept slightly different hours, with me being the first up for lectures and the last back from labs and I would always find little treats waiting for me like the time one of my roommates made everyone cupcakes and she saved 5 of them for me, and they all had a science theme decorated on them, which was very sweet. However, I have had roommates and they have been murder to live with. So to answer, yes I can live with a roommate or a few, but I have to know them and like them.

 

[Barbas]

I've known good ones and bad ones, but overall I think everybody needs a place they can go to be alone. So no, because people need their privacy and you can't always count on being in a room with someone considerate enough to understand that.

 

[Qwurty2.0]

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Yeah, I'm lucky that he's rarely in the room, but our sleep schedules don't match so when I come back to study (I figure it's better to consolidate my studying/school work for mid day during classes and leave fun after)he's still sleeping and the tiniest noises wake him. Beginning of the semester I would go to sleep at a decent time (midnight, lol) and he would come in at like 2-4 A.M., turn the lights on or slam the door... Took a while before he realized what he was doing and stopped.

I sometimes go to the library, but I feel like I study better when I'm in my room alone, as I get distracted (people watching ) when in public. I'm hoping my roomies next year will be more fun and a better match.

 

[dyre]

Yeah, I love roommates...as long as I get my own room. Remember, you can have "roommates" in the context of sharing an off-campus apartment too! I've got four roommates sharing a semi-luxurious three bedroom two bathroom apartment, and on average the rent paid is about equal to the rip-off university dorms, but our living conditions are vastly better. I pay the largest amount of rent but I get my own bedroom with a private bathroom and walk-in closet...not too bad for a college kid

I wouldn't want to live all alone, so roommates (most of whom I actually like) make good company, but the privacy is there too. But in terms of sharing a room with someone, yeah, that sucks. Even if they're neat, polite, and quiet when you need to be, that's still not the same as having your own castle (or bedroom)

 

[Artina89]

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Yeah, I'm lucky that he's rarely in the room, but our sleep schedules don't match so when I come back to study (I figure it's better to consolidate my studying/school work for mid day during classes and leave fun after)he's still sleeping and the tiniest noises wake him. Beginning of the semester I would go to sleep at a decent time (midnight, lol) and he would come in at like 2-4 A.M., turn the lights on or slam the door... Took a while before he realized what he was doing and stopped.

I sometimes go to the library, but I feel like I study better when I'm in my room alone, as I get distracted (people watching ) when in public. I'm hoping my roomies next year will be more fun and a better match.

When I was at university, the only communal areas we had were the bathroom, kitchen and living area, we each had our own rooms and they were well soundproofed so the only time you could hear what was going on was if you had your door open (which we usually did unless we were sleeping or studying).

 

[Rolaoi]

I've lived with a roommate for two years straight now with a one year stint on my own and another two with a roommate. It gets annoying at times. The only person I've ever been comfortable living with was my bunkmate from BCT. We clicked on some crazy level.

I've tended to ignore my roommates. So long as they're clean and quiet and don't smoke or dip indoors, I'm fine to leave them be. I'll usually even foot the bill for the Internet and television on my own, but that's more because I like to have complete control over it.

 

[Qwurty2.0]

Yeah, I love roommates...as long as I get my own room. Remember, you can have "roommates" in the context of sharing an off-campus apartment too! I've got four roommates sharing a semi-luxurious three bedroom two bathroom apartment, and on average the rent paid is about equal to the rip-off university dorms, but our living conditions are vastly better. I pay the largest amount of rent but I get my own bedroom with a private bathroom and walk-in closet...not too bad for a college kid

I wouldn't want to live all alone, so roommates (most of whom I actually like) make good company, but the privacy is there too. But in terms of sharing a room with someone, yeah, that sucks. Even if they're neat, polite, and quiet when you need to be, that's still not the same as having your own castle (or bedroom)

Yeah, I should have clarified that I am okay having roommates as long as I have my own room for privacy. Currently I live in the biggest and oldest dorm on the campus and we share a single room (albeit one of the biggest on our floor) and there's no real privacy. I can't ask him to leave because it's both our room and I have no right to kick him out, but it'd be a pain to move my stuff just to get away.

I can't wait to get my own apartment, preferably with some friends I'm close to. Next year it's the on-campus apartment suites, and after than I hope to get my own apartment (or maybe just stay in the suites if their good, as I've heard they are).

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Lucky. I can't wait to get my own room again. It's just not mine if I share it. I want to do projects, decorate, and customize my room, but I have to share it, lol.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

So I'm coming to the end of my second semester of college and have decided that I absolutely hate sharing my room with someone I am not intimately familiar with.

I know that feeling all too well. I wasn't allowed to choose my roommate Freshman year, the school assigned them. They had us fill out this online personality test type thing ahead of time to try and match people with similar interests, but going by the person I got, I have a feeling they didn't even look at people's answers.

During the course of my entire Freshman year I think my roommate and I only spoke to each other maybe five or six times (half of which relating to our finicky door lock which would jam from time to time). In his free time he did nothing but watch TV, and it was always shitty sitcoms like Friends, Will & Grace, Reba, etc. that I can't stand and listen to country music very loudly (I can't stand country, either). I found out about halfway through first semester that he was gay, which on its own isn't a problem at all, because he invited people over for sex while I was still in the room. His side of the room was the side with access to the air conditioner, so it was almost always freezing (I'm from New Hampshire, I'm used to cold, and I still had to have my parents send me sweatshirts from home just to tolerate living in my own room). He never helped out at all with any of the cleaning or taking trash out. I could go on and on, but yeah, the point is that he was an awful roommate.

But during the year I made friends around campus, and when time came to sign up for sophomore dorms I was able to become roommates with them, and everything went fine. Stuck with the same group of four from my sophomore year to my senior year, and they were an awesome bunch of people that I miss quite a bit. So yeah, I'm definitely okay with roommates, but it really does depend on who they are.

 

[dyre]

I can't wait to get my own apartment, preferably with some friends I'm close to. Next year it's the on-campus apartment suites, and after than I hope to get my own apartment (or maybe just stay in the suites if their good, as I've heard they are).

Even if you like the suites, maybe take a quick look at some local apartments to see if they're competitive, just in case.

Some of my friends tell me how nice their suites are, and then I go to their place and it's like "what is this, Cambodia?"
j/k, but private apartments do have the potential to be a lot better than any kind of college suite, so if the rates are competitive, why not live a little better, right?

 

[shootthebandit]

I live with some guys from work. Sharing the rent and bills is cheap and liftsharing is so easy

pros:
- social, we go out most weekends and splitting a taxi is like £2 into town. We all tend to get along and watch similar TV so its a good atmosphere
- affordability. You can pay rent and pay bills on a big 4 bed house for about £300pm each
- lift sharing. When you live and work together its so easy to lift share and save petrol money
- chances are someone will have something you dont have and vice versa. For example I had a washing machine and my friend had a fridge

cons:
- people being noisy at 6am when you have just worked a nightshift
- when you need your own space (although we all have a room so its ok)
- fighting for showers in the morning
- bringing girls back can be awkward (especially noisy ones, if you know what I mean)


seriously id recommend it. Ive never been to uni where ive had to share with randoms in a dilapidated old house. Ive always shared with work colleagues that I get along with

 

[Qwurty2.0]

I can't wait to get my own apartment, preferably with some friends I'm close to. Next year it's the on-campus apartment suites, and after than I hope to get my own apartment (or maybe just stay in the suites if their good, as I've heard they are).

Even if you like the suites, maybe take a quick look at some local apartments to see if they're competitive, just in case.

Some of my friends tell me how nice their suites are, and then I go to their place and it's like "what is this, Cambodia?"
j/k, but private apartments do have the potential to be a lot better than any kind of college suite, so if the rates are competitive, why not live a little better, right?

Yeah, definitely. I'm also entertaining the idea of transferring back the city in my home state, as I currently live in a large town/small city and it's... well, pretty boring. :/ Most of the houses I see are old and worn down, and the apartments are basically leased by the school anyway.

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I agree, I would have lived in an apartment with friends if I had had the money (or knew anyone, as it was my first time moving to a new state). The school has their own apartments which are pretty nice, but the requirements were "19 years old" or "Sophomore status", of which I was neither.

 

[shootthebandit]

I can't wait to get my own apartment, preferably with some friends I'm close to. Next year it's the on-campus apartment suites, and after than I hope to get my own apartment (or maybe just stay in the suites if their good, as I've heard they are).

Even if you like the suites, maybe take a quick look at some local apartments to see if they're competitive, just in case.

Some of my friends tell me how nice their suites are, and then I go to their place and it's like "what is this, Cambodia?"
j/k, but private apartments do have the potential to be a lot better than any kind of college suite, so if the rates are competitive, why not live a little better, right?

Yeah, definitely. I'm also entertaining the idea of transferring back the city in my home state, as I currently live in a large town/small city and it's... well, pretty boring. :/ Most of the houses I see are old and worn down, and the apartments are basically leased by the school anyway.

landlords will rip you off if they know you are a student looking for a room. However if you get a 3 or 4 bed house for a group of you and sort the bills out yourself you can probably save money and live in a better part of town. Houses landlords rent to students (or room only) tend to be in the not so nice part of town and they are poorly fitted. I stayed over at a friends who was at uni and he lived near a couple of shady drug dealers and the central heating was basically nonexistent.

 

[Esotera]

I don't have someone actually living in my room with me, but I've been house-sharing for the last 4 years in 4 different houses, and it has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages being I quite like the people I'm living with at the minute and it's good to have company, and the disadvantages being that it gets very messy very quickly, and student accommodation always crams in more people than the house was designed for. Living with 3-4 housemates is probably the upper limit of what's bearable to live with.

On a more off-topic note the housing situation in the UK is completely fucked, so it's likely I'm going to be house-sharing for at least a few more years, hopping from house to house, without being able to call a place a home. The cost of houses is so bad that it's legitimately making me think about emigrating as I don't see it being fixed anytime soon.

 

[Silvanus]

In my first term of my first year, I lived at first with someone I didn't have much in common with, and got pretty miserable. Not the poor guy's fault.

I changed rooms, however, when a friend's roommate vacated his space and I took his place. So, roommates for two terms, and housemates for two years after. Really enjoyed sharing, and really enjoyed my room becoming a hub for our circle of friends, who would visit and populate the room often before I had even got up.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Depend of he roommate personality and traits.
My experiences with roommate can be summed up like this during my time in Uni-

First year- It started off great (shared with two other people) but it became somewhat less and less later on. One of them did had to leave Uni cos he was ill far too often (he said he will return next year) and his room was vacant for the rest of the year. Sure I didn't exactly hand out with the other one but we did watched Red Dwarf (he was a huge fan) and Lost together in his room. Still I do got to give credit for him to putting up spell checking for me during my essay.

Second year- I was in a house with 11 other people. While I have gotten along with most of them (however there was one I didn't know too well as he was rarely in the house) but we most of us kept to our rooms only. There was two I spoke oftern with while one of them I had gotten along with the most cos he was into anime with me. Granted there were three people who I loathe since their traits were oppersite to me (loud and outgoing) apparently it never occur to them that people will be asleep at 3pm on a weekday. I swear I should of reported them to the receptionist when their drunken antic had resulted in a leak on my ceiling (the kitchen was above my room and they were haven a drunken water fight from the sink)!

Third year- It was the most anti social out of the three. Again I got along with the two and we spend most of it in our room however there were away most of the time so I pretty much felt like I had the place to myself.

I will admit I am an anti social guy but it take someone with similar insterest to me (anime and games) to get me out and hang out more.

 

[DugMachine]

As long as they keep up on their end of the rent, not too loud and do chores evenly I don't have a problem. I tend to keep to myself so I'm not really in it for the social aspect but I like the ambiance of a full house I guess. Much better than the dead quiet of a solo apartment. I live on my own but my girlfriend is almost always over so it's like I have a roommate.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Absolutely not. Even my best friends I would get tired of eventually. Sometimes I just really want to be alone even for days at a time and most people just take that as you being rude or not liking them. Dealing with people that I don't have to live with can be hard enough. The thought of having to co-exist with other people aside from my immediate family is pretty disturbing.

 

[Lieju]

I have issues with people, so it would probably end up in a nervous breakdown.

Unless it was someone I knew well enough and someone I trusted.
And if I had my own room I could lock.

And I could be sure they don't touch my food or stuff.

 

[Wasted]

I had great experiences living with my roommates while doing my internship during my 2nd year of my master's program, granted we all had our own bedrooms. I could see how actually sharing a bedroom would be frustrating. My roommates were essentially strangers when we moved in and we ended up developing a good friendship over our year together.

Hopefully you get to experience something similar OP.