Nah, my freshman year roommate dad was in the LA Costra Nostra. He gave me his car and computer and he just left for days at a time. His pops was mad cool too and would always send money for both of us. Shit was kinds wild in hindsight. Roommate had a 0.0 after 1st semester though lol.
Yes, though I have to own part of it. I was assigned a roommate because I said I was a neat person since I aspired to be a neat person rather than the organized chaos person I really was.
2 guys on my floor, roommates, were the pot dealers. They used the proceeds to buy their own pot. They got midterm GPAs of 0.0 and 0.5, and that was the end of them.
Yes, for various reasons. One of which was seeing my roommate's girlfriend passed out drunk in a puddle of her own vomit on our floor. Put me off of drinking for years afterward. Another reason was general crippling depression.
She was a rich girl from Delhi India, never cleaned up after herself, shoes on the bed … all that.
When I confronted her about never cleaning the bathroom she said “i don’t know how to clean and you’re so good at it I just let you do it. Like my maids back home.”
Which one? #1 was a white girl from a small town who was obsessed with “Friends” and “Nightmare on Elm Street,” and used the N-word to describe a guy who asked her out. When I called her a racist b-word in response, she ripped up the picture of my high school sweetheart who was black.
Roommate #2 kept getting calls from the Sheriffs dept about a theft at the convenience store she worked at… and then I came in one night to see her with a giant pile of pot she was bagging to sell.
#3 lost her part-time job about a week into being roommates and got severely depressed. She would set about 12 snooze alarms and sleep through them all. And then she brought her long distance boyfriend to visit overnight. I came back to my room to him sleeping in my bed…
Yes she hated me and accused me of stealing her snacks and I didn’t but she should have offered to share them and she had sex without locking the door and left me with nowhere to sleep
Boyfriend would stay over on the weekends I went home. School had "visitation hours" so he'd have to sneak back in after hours and used a 2L bottle to go to the bathroom overnight. Came home after the weekend to find the 2L on the floor under our desks. 🤮
There was a girl in my dorm who didn't sleep in her room but would stop in intermittently to dump trash on her bed and desk. The room was absolutely disgusting by the end of the year.
Bith daughters did - one was so drunk she peed in their floor. The other was so drunk once she went out in the single digit snowy night, drunk, no jacket and ended up in some guy's room. Bith horrific drunks and totally wrecked their side of the room. Both rich girls smh
Mine had a nervous breakdown, and his mom called and asked if I knew where he was. He tore shit off of the wall, and one night I woke up and he was standing over me.
His brother never messaged me back when I reached out years ago to check on him.
First semester, he was harmless and transferred after a semester. Then I let a friend move into my room to get away from a bad roommate situation and he was the smelliest, most disgusting person I’ve ever lived with.
She educated me on the vast range of technological aptitude among elder millennials. I would torrent (terrible) music for her and she would type her papers on my computer with two fingers.
no but he flunked out of college right around the beginning of the second semester, so i had the room for myself for the rest of it. wasn't a very well-put together guy though.
Such an odd idiosyncratic Americanism . Sharing your bedroom with a stranger when you’ve moved away from home for the first time . Very strange and virtually non-existent elsewhere.
I debased myself enough (disability office) to get a single room (because I had a homeless friend to house with me.) He had a seizure that traumatized us both! But obviously that was not his fault.
She moved out without telling me so one day I came back to our room and it just half empty. We also had jobs in the same office on campus and our boss asked where she was and I had to be like I think she dropped out. Not exactly traumatic but it was weird.
I had the opposite problem. I came back to the dorm one afternoon, the week before finals, to all of my possessions in a giant cardboard box in the hallway. We agreed to swap roommates with the girls across the hall after the semester was done but she couldn’t wait.
to be fair I came pre-traumatized (thanks adolescence and high school!), was an undiagnosed neurodivergent dealing with self-medication, and one roommate had a horrible personal tragedy none of us knew how to process
We were incompatible, crowded, and stressed. Leaving was a great option!
No, they were amazing, couldn’t have asked for better! I had two, we are all married with kiddos, we still love each other and go to events for each other. 🥰💕
I loved her! She sang like Barbra Streisand and pilfered grated cheese from her work-study job in the cafeteria so we could make cheesy popcorn. She was quirky and more worldly than I, even though she was from a small town and I was a big city gal. I’ve tried to track her down. No luck.
Nah, my freshman roommate was chill, was out of the room a lot, then transferred/dropped after one semester for reasons I can't remember (not bad) and I had the room to myself the whole spring semester.
No. We roomed together the first semester of our second year also, at which point she transferred to TX, where her parents had moved. We kept in touch for a number of years, even though we were quite different from each other.
No but she tried so hard every week to get me to go to her little Christian study group even though I told her every week to please stop asking me because, as an atheist, the answer was always going to be no. By the next year, she was also an atheist 😂
Sort of but it was probably my fault, I’m an ADHD chaos goblin and I TRIED to keep my half of the room tidy, I really did, but it was never up to her standards and I admit I’m probably just difficult to live with.
I don’t mean to sound sexist, but boys to men make terrible college roommates. My first roomie was a pretty Jewish “princess” who read the Latin dictionary. I asked her why, and she had to explain that it was used in law (pre-law). I was so clueless! I never saw her again after that first term 🥹
YES!!! I wasn’t a stick in the mud, but I was serious about studying, I was serious about working, I was serious about at least getting a little sleep. My roommate was serious about constant “romantic” encounters at the volume that would threaten permanent damage if one’s hearing!
No. I spent freshman year at a tiny college and there were a bunch of us in bunk beds in big dorm rooms, but surprisingly, I didn't find it traumatizing.
I had two. I apparently traumatized one of them by hanging out on my bed--fully dressed, lights on--next to my bf while studying. She wrote me a note saying that seeing it "hurt [her] heart." She was Mormon and went home, 90 minutes each way, every weekend for church.
I had my own room in a extended suite; actually, two connected suites, maybe 13 dudes total. I was traumatized by the filth and the absurd skill of GoldenEye played there, while also traumatizing myself by almost setting my room on fire burning incense. It was all the learning you could want.
He wasn’t - but his best bud did. Tried an intervention to tell me that my roommate didn’t want a gay roommate. When I confronted him, he said it was his friends idea so they could room together. Tanked what could have been a decent friendship with an otherwise supremely cool guy.
He was very chill, was gone most of the time every non-Home Game Weekend) & had a stereo & an Apple II computer. I took Computer Science my Senior Year of HS on an Apple IIe, so he didn’t mind me using it as I knew what I was doing.
I had a TV, paid for cable, & rented a fridge. We rocked.
Not traumatize me, but gave me hell. One refused to speak with me and was a huge mess, and when I changed rooms, the second roommate was drunk a lot and not the fun kind of drunk. Maybe it did traumatize me.
I went to a community college and then transferred to a four year college and lived in the dorm for one semester until I figured out housing going forward. But yeah, and her name was Wendy. God I hated that b****. lol
I couldn't listen to Enya again for over twenty years because of my roommate. And yes, it's a beautiful song unless it plays on loop every night for a year.
Every person in my senior class is still traumatized by that song because our geometry teacher played it on repeat during class every single day. It still makes me tense up.
I am sorry to say that my undiagnosed-neurospicy ass was the problem roommate during my freshman year, for reasons that I absolutely do not want to relive. College was where I learned that I did not know how to socialize whatsoever.
Her friends would be in our room at 9am when I'd come back from a shower. At first, it was obnoxious, but then I learned that if they didn't come over, she wouldn't shower. She only changed her sheets once the entire year.
yes i literally went home all but one weekend, because luckily i was close enough to do that, and oof i will be paying for that experience in the form of private loans for literally ever probably
No freshman roommate, but my hallmates were quite something. End of year dorm damage fees for 6 whole sets of lounge furniture and multiple refills of every fire extinguisher? A literal toga party? With commemorative t-shirts???
Yes. She was having sex in the shower & left the 💦 on the wall. No one believed me as I was 15. Cuz came to stay one weekend, he beat up the boyfriend & made them clean it up & the🩸.She moved out on Mon never reported it as her parents would have killed her. ❤️ for my cuz always there for me
my first roommates and I were on different, but equal levels of fucked-up and inexperienced.
#1 was a lazy bum, unable to run even basic errands.
I was undiagnosed with ADHD and had a tendency to be emotionally disregulated.
perfect recipe for conflict.
our #3 was like a leaf in the wind...
She decided adjusting to EST was for losers and kept her waking schedule from China, meaning loud music and phonecalls at 2-5AM every day, and would invite her friends over to go through my side of the closet and laugh and point at my things because I was "poor". Last roommate I ever had.
No, well, maybe a bit. He was a nice guy. He went home every weekend. One weekend in the middle of our 2nd semester, he didn't come back. I think he was just super-homesick. I never saw him again, which is sort of traumatic. I remember his name 57 years later. Sad, remembering that.
No trauma per se, but a def disinclination toward roommate situations. My last couple of years in college I had a lovely little garage apartment all to myself….*sigh
My fresh roomie saw I got cookies from my mom, heard me say “have some”, and when i returned that same day ate all but one of them. “You ate them all”, I said. “No I didn’t, I left one.” Thats when I knew I was dealing with a psychopath. He’s an economics professor at a tier one university now.
No, not at all. He was probably the best possible person I could have had as a roommate at that point in my life. He was studying to become a deacon, so he was generally not out partying or doing anything illicit. I was (and still am) introverted, so I never went anywhere really.
Yes; they threw fits when I made friends or dated ppl by doing things like saying I couldn’t sit on their furniture in our communal space (I wasn’t in dorms) or all of a sudden shifting behavior like refusing to eat with me & being cold to me.
Honorable mention to when my Mex-american guy friends visited the same weekend as roomie’s parents and they freaked cuz “what will parents say abt guys in our home?!” Their first idea was to “throw them into the backyard and say they’re day laborers”
No. After 4 years of boarding school, I was used to roommates. I, however, traumatized him after he destroyed my minifridge when I was away for a weekend. Scared the crap out of our RA too... =cracks knuckles=
No. I had two awesome roommates my freshman year, and we had so much fun. They each had exactly the right balance between spontaneous antics and responsibility.
I may have traumatized mine. I moved to a different room the first week to room with a friend from HS. It wasn’t even anything personal, I just have a lot of social anxiety and jumped at the chance to room with someone I already knew. But I didn’t talk to her about it, so who knows what she thought.
I think *I* traumatized my freshman year roommate. He was an exchange student from Japan. Over one of the breaks, I invited him over to my parents' house.
My family, of course, decided to have a battle running around the house with these plastic toy guns that shoot little plastic discs.
Ohohoho wow do I have a story for the group today.
I had TWO freshman year roommates, and they were both a nightmare.
My first roommate did NOT want to be there. Not at all. College wasn’t his idea, it was what his parents made him do. His first week there, he bought a Kawasaki motorcycle…
…and you might not think that’s such a big deal, until I tell you that he once took the engine apart *inside our room* and then wondered why I was mad when all the parts were scattered everywhere.
A month into college, he decided he wasn’t going to go to classes anymore. The college part of college wasn’t for him. But it was okay, he assured everyone. After all, since his parents paid for the semester he logically got to keep living here for the full semester
But that’s okay, he had a plan. And the plan was to return his motorcycle to the dealership and use his last $200 to buy an old beater-car to pack all his belongings into and hit the road.
Roommate number 2 was A) racist. He called a friend of mine the N-word for liking rap music, and B) snored every single night, so loudly people could hear him outside our room. And C) took phone calls every night at 1 AM from his high school girlfriend, whom he was constantly cheating on.
Yes. We couldn't have been more different. I was first in extended family to attend college. He had a brother that was a senior at the same school. Luckily, next door was a similar situation. We swapped roommates. I started to learn the guitar, for the first time. Still a work in progress.
She was from Japan and was excited for a career as an air hostess. Her parents called one morning and in my half-asleep state, had to try to remember enough Japanese to explain she was visiting Philadelphia.
I never lived in the dorms, but I did eventually have a college roommate that fucking sucked. And if Jeff Browning ever sees this I hope he knows I fucking hate him.
Yeah. Came home drunk pretty much every night, liked to pee out the dorm room window (we were on the sixth floor). One night I woke up to the sound of him peeing all over the floor.
But, he did get thrown out for threatening an RA, so I got a single room for the rest of the year.
Somehow I got stuck with someone from my hometown that I detested, I assumed he requested it. By the end of the first semester we weren't even on speaking terms. He quietly moved out over Xmas break, and I never spoke to him again. Got a new roomie, a good friend I had made from the dorm. Lotsa fun!
My junior year roommate was a nightmare, though. He spent most of his time surfing and smoking at the beach, and our shared walk-in closet always smelled like cigs and weed, which meant my stuff also did.
My roommate was great, but the guy next door listened to "Heart-Shaped Box," cranked, for a week straight (and much of the time after that) after Kurt Cobain's death. It was a rough time for everyone, but cmon seven days of that, 24/7? The RA checked on him and he was lying face down on the floor.
Slept with a white noise machine - normally it was ocean waves but one night she accidentally kicked it and changed it to the heartbeat sound. Traumatized us both.
I had 2 roommates - One had “never seen a black person” .. and the other tried to “suffocate my boyfriend & when he actually woke up.. tried to kill him with a sword”.. so… 😐 Yeah people are fucked
omg yes. so much trauma. it’s hard to get out of the room when their bed is closest to the door and they are having loud, drunk sex. 6 feet away. Good times, good times. ick
Sarah remains one of my all time favorite people on this planet. I had no idea I was so lucky to have been paired with a great roommate my freshman year.
He was my best friend from high school. We had very different schedules. It caused problems. We came to blows one time. I've never been closer to another man other than my maternal brothers. He's an actual genuine genius. I'll never forget him.
Sorry was on another bender. Idk we met in 6th grade, I had had to start going to school the previous year because my mother died and I think we connected over our intellect and love of video games and mommy issues. Specifically we played a lot of Minecraft.
He would drink at 10 AM and sold Adderall to his friends. He also did it with a random chick on my bed once while I was out and left a umm mess on the bed.
Her hometown boyfriend decided it would be romantic to surprise her so he drove to our state, arrived at 2am, and jimmied the lock to our room. He was 6'6 and had shaved his head since we met so I woke up to our door standing open and a huge bald dude leaning over my roommate's bed.
Not at all. I'm white. He is Latinx.
He was working his way towards coming out of the closet.
I had a long way to go (and always will) but I really started to realize my job was to un-learn rather than learn from my time living with him.
I miss him.
But my friend I’ve known almost 20 years had a freshman year roommate who would turn on Antiques Roadshow while he watched hentai so my friend would known not to turn around
My roommate was weird. All my friends thought so. One put a removable tape mustache on her poster of some shirtless guy and she lost it. She moved out a week later. I had a single room the rest of the semester and paid for it the next. I preferred not having a roommate.
My frosh roomie was a nice Jewish boy from north Jersey who loved Elton John (I didn’t). Taught this nice Pennsylvania German boy how to be a better human being.
Yes. About 2 weeks into the semester, she sat on her bed, looked me directly in the eyes, turned and stuck a screwdriver into an electric outlet. Remarkably, the result was sparks, not electrocution. I moved out.
Nah, he was pretty chill. Neither of us were very clean people so his stack of pizza boxes in the trash can didn't bother me. He mostly played Eve online all the time. My sophomore year roommate on the other hand...
She didn't want to be there her parents forced her to come to college. She would go home every weekend. We did a Christmas window painting competition after Thanksgiving, and that was when people found out I had a roommate 😂
Had 2 roommates my freshman year. Lasted 5 weeks & I moved to a single. One pissed her bed & didn’t change the sheets until the RA intervened (rubber mattress pad=pooled urine), the other missed the sorority rush application & cried every day & all night. They were HS besties. I dipped
Oh yeah. Super possessive neat freak who made a freakin' chore chart for the room (and that was just for starters). Moved out of that room and in with a good friend (who is STILL a good friend). Phew!
My freshman year roommate and I spoke maybe 15 words to each other for the first semester. He left to room with a friend next semester. Had the room to myself.
Which one? I can’t help but worry that I was the trauma causer, I went through 4. Runner girl, robot girl, local who wanted the experience the rest of us got, and calligraphy girl. The calligrapher was my favorite, she was spring term and lots of fun, plus awesomely talented.
We had nothing in common, co-existed painlessly, ignoring one another, and never saw or thought of one another afterwards. This strikes me now as a quaint example of something that couldn’t possibly happen today.
Yes. But she transferred after first semester & then I had my room to myself. My second-year roommate, who was a friend, traumatized me worse by revealing her true self & taking things without asking even when I asked her not to and waking me up by yelling at me. Jr. and Sr. years were much better.
I had 2. We had a 3-tier bunk bed, me on top. The guy on the bottom couldn't sleep without a fan on - that was annoying. Middle bunk would only play Carole King on his stereo. I had the only typewriter.
We probably ate 2 meals together the whole year. I don't remember their names. '71-72
I had a three bedroom off campus apartment with two other girls so we didn't share rooms. They were both very sheltered white girls, I think I traumatized them a bit. I taught them how to do jagerbombs on a Monday night and lost feeder crickets in the apartment sometimes because of my pet lizard.
Comments
Needless to say it didn't work out well.
When I confronted her about never cleaning the bathroom she said “i don’t know how to clean and you’re so good at it I just let you do it. Like my maids back home.”
I wanted to fight her so bad.
You don’t have any maids here.
The bloom was off the rose 😜
https://bookshop.org/a/106296/9781400247950
His brother never messaged me back when I reached out years ago to check on him.
Long live Russell Hall 3 North
Jessica, if you're on bsky, I'm really sorry.
I switched rooms next semester with a close friend of theirs. I later found out they stayed roommates 4 years but turned on their friend 🤨
glad I escaped
We were incompatible, crowded, and stressed. Leaving was a great option!
So, no.
My freshman year roommate was an empty bed with a foil tablecloth on it to keep the dust off!
I had a TV, paid for cable, & rented a fridge. We rocked.
But yes, it was college in the 90s.
I didn't think it'd be the same song on repeat.
And I'm so nonconfrontational that, after a few days, it was too late to bring it up. That was just my life now.
plot twist--i had a single
The guy next door got booted out for huffing shoe polish
#1 was a lazy bum, unable to run even basic errands.
I was undiagnosed with ADHD and had a tendency to be emotionally disregulated.
perfect recipe for conflict.
our #3 was like a leaf in the wind...
Disturb Yes.
Young College Republican with bad hygiene.
I may have been the traumatizer.
sorry gerg
My family, of course, decided to have a battle running around the house with these plastic toy guns that shoot little plastic discs.
1/2
Roommate had to take that through airport security.
Unrelated, I also got to watch him learn, for the very first time, that Darth Vader is Luke's father.
2/2
I had TWO freshman year roommates, and they were both a nightmare.
My first roommate did NOT want to be there. Not at all. College wasn’t his idea, it was what his parents made him do. His first week there, he bought a Kawasaki motorcycle…
He was expelled after 2 weeks
And I never saw him again-
-he was back 2 weeks later for a party.
But by semester 2 I was assigned a new roommate. And I actually hated this guy a lot more.
She was from Japan and was excited for a career as an air hostess. Her parents called one morning and in my half-asleep state, had to try to remember enough Japanese to explain she was visiting Philadelphia.
But, he did get thrown out for threatening an RA, so I got a single room for the rest of the year.
Sleep was... difficult
But it was straaaaange.
I think I traumatized HER.
(We didn't like each other but I wasn't gonna let her get serial killed six feet from my bed.)
He was working his way towards coming out of the closet.
I had a long way to go (and always will) but I really started to realize my job was to un-learn rather than learn from my time living with him.
I miss him.
But my friend I’ve known almost 20 years had a freshman year roommate who would turn on Antiques Roadshow while he watched hentai so my friend would known not to turn around
It was a bunch of relatively minor things that added up over time, but the big highlight was one night he hooked up with his Chem lab partner
*please note that “was” has two meanings here because I woke up about halfway through
Apparently I kept talking in my sleep. He recorded it and took it to the languages college to get it translated.
They said it was perfect English. Backwards.
we were roommates for 3 years.
My sophomore year roommate was the nightmare.
Then couldn't be seen with me.
Pretty much set my social outcast pattern.
None of them got the chance to traumatize me before 9/11.
We probably ate 2 meals together the whole year. I don't remember their names. '71-72
If anything, I traumatized him.