What? Whoa! Time travel? No. Recalibration. We have two extra days before the boy goes to college. His room and roommate assignment arrived in the mail and his move-in date and time are very specifically scheduled. Borrowed time friends, borrowed time.
Last night, before the roommate assignment arrived in today’s mail, the boy was friended by his new roomie in Facebook. Oh, how I love Facebook. I know, I’m not allowed to because, dude, I’m old and all that.
The boy said how he’s now seen 300 photos of his soon-to-be roommate which, out of context, seems weird. On the flip side, he reviewed his own profile from the perspective of the new roomie and observed photos of himself playing trombone, playing board games and has decided that future roomie is thinking, “Great. My roommate is a geek.”
I spun the wheel my freshman year of college and got Jenny, the tuba player, German student and rabid parrothead. I got lucky.
What was your freshman college roommate like? Did you spin the wheel, or go with someone you already knew?
My freshman year roommate? Which one? The first one that lasted 3 months — she was extremely religious and couldn’t cope with the fact that one of my friends had an “alternative lifestyle.” She was so pent up with rage that by senior year, she went WILD. It was … interesting … to see the change. The second one was better, but she was in such an unhealthy relationship with a senior guy that she withdrew 3 times over her years at the school and eventually transferred out.
I spun the wheel and received a hypocritical, born-again Christian. Hypocritical because she often invited her boyfriend to sleep with her in our room. She lasted a semester. That’s when a friend from high school asked to share my room. That was much, much better.
I shared with a friend from high school. It was comforting, but she didn’t care for the fact that we had different friends. She was also dating a MUCH older MAN, and that was not easy for me to handle, so that topic was tough to discuss. All in all, we had a good relationship, I think. She dropped out the next year and I spun the wheel, but was in a suite with a couple of good friends that I’d met my freshman year, so kind of a safety net there. My spin the wheel girl was very nice, and I didn’t regret it.
My roommate was a good friend from high school – I thought we’d have a blast. Of course, we didn’t. She thought I “betrayed our friendship” and “turned into a bowhead” by going through rush, and me making the college dance team sealed my fate as an idiotic, superficial ex-friend she would no longer speak to. She started drinking like a fish and ended up moving out at second semester to live with her new girlfriend – and I had to take multiple calls from her mom sobbing into the phone that her child had “gone gay.” The RA on my floor felt so sorry for me she didn’t even make me get another roommate, so I ended up living alone in the spring – actually turned out to be a sweet deal!