[ 01-26-05 ] [ 4:54 p.m.]
[ On roommates ]

This is fairly weird.

Because I am a nice person by nature, and I prefer to live in a somewhat peaceful environment, I offered to let my roommate Katie use my laptop computer to use an editing program of which her free trial had expired. She's working on ripping a 2-minute version of Duran Duran's new song for her dance team. So while she works on that, I'm using her computer.

Katie mentioned to me that her old roommate would never have let her do something like switch laptops. To me, it's not that big of a deal. It's a laptop, and it's not like she's asking to borrow it for life. As long as she doesn't get into some of the documents I have saved, I don't particularly care one way or another.

It's a funny thing about roommates. Sometimes, there are days when I would like nothing more than to move out of this room and never speak to Katie again. And then, there are times when it feels like Katie and I have been friends for longer than just a few months. Roommates have a funny way of getting on your nerves when you thought it wasn't possible to be any more pissed off. And also, it's not the easiest thing in the world living in a 12 foot by 12 foot box with another person.

Luckily, Katie and I have never had problems with space or using each other's stuff. I'm pretty good about letting people borrow my crap, as long as they ask first, and Katie's the same way. Our room is also pretty much divided down the center, so we don't run into space issues. Mostly, the problems with Katie and I come with the fact that we aren't two people you would normally put together. I am, to say the very least, eccentric. I am beginning to believe that I'm the weirdest person Katie has ever come into contact with. She knows that I don't have a boyfriend, but she doesn't know that Carol and I are dating - and probably will never know. In addition to that, I tend to spring my strange humor on her, and I'm not sure she understands it.

Katie is a very mature person, and I guess you could call her normal. Pretending for a moment that normal isn't relative, she's about as normal as a person could get. She's engaged and spends a good part of her life with her fiance, Matt, and she loves to dance. She's also graduating at the end of this semester and becoming a nurse.

Luckily, we're both nice enough and gracious enough to deal with the parts of each other that we don't like. If we're both feeling likeable enough, which is most of the time, we get along like friends.

I've thought a lot on how it will be for me next year, since I'll be returning to room 252 and my roommate will not be Katie. I wonder every day if I'll get a freshman roomie, a sophomore, or another roommate who is a few years older than me, like Katie. I wonder if it'll be someone like Katie's roommate from last year, who she hated, someone like Katie's roommate from freshman year, who she adored, or someone a lot like Katie. I wonder if my new roomie will be as accepting of my tendency to stay awake all hours of the night. I wonder if my roommate will have to wake up as early as Katie for class.

Coming into this year, I wondered about the same things. I was a little disappointed when I wound up with Katie, because she is not someone I could become infinitely close to. But now, I realize that I'm actually quite thankful - I got lucky and avoided the "bitch roommate", and managed to land myself with someone who's been a ton of help getting me used to college life.

Roommates, basically, are a surprise. You fill out the stupid little questionaire and wait to see what you get. Whether or not you get what you expected is another story.

[ ]

[ last ] [ next ]