A Guide to Living with Others

Welcome or welcome back! Most of you are settled in by now but with the hustle and bustle of moving in, orientation, then Paris- you haven't spent much time dwelling on your room situation. But give it time, dear reader, and the laundry will pile up and your adjacent room’s loud music leaking through your walls will begin to become almost soothing. Even if you were raised with siblings, this situation may be new to you. Besides most of the sibling problem solving skills if employed here would result in some type of legal charge. So, how do you navigate the roommate woes? 

Preparation and open communication. Your RA’s should have already created a roommate agreement with you and your roommate by now but that is something you can always revise as time goes on. Conflict can feel scary or intense but it is much easier to handle an annoyance early on before you are too heated to have a discussion. Make sure to set firm boundaries and to be understanding of you and your roommate’s needs. I reached out to our Residence Life Director, Katherine Shamburger for wisdom. She advises that, “adjusting to living with others can be a challenge as you start college. If you want to set yourself up for success, I would say the best thing you can do is sit down with your roommate and figure out how you will address issues as they come up. Problems will occur, that’s a by-product of living around other humans. But if you can both be considerate of each other, open to listening when the other person brings up something with you, and be willing to make compromises in your room as needed, you can solve 90% of your problems with a small conversation. For the other 10%, your RA is your next best resource.”