by wyrd on Mon Nov 11, 2002 10:17 pm
Kensson - lol, I remember reading that list in the Regs computer room after you sent me it to cheer me up back in my first year. It's still pretty funny. :)
go get them - I can sympathise. There are two solutions, which probably work best when done simulatneously. The first one is to see accomodation services and beg them to move you. I didn't do that - I had a big thing about not accepting defeat or something at the time - but looking back it might have been the sensible option.
The second option is to let other people share your pain - there's nothing like "my roommate from hell" stories for starting a conversation. I'm in my fifth year now, so I look back on it all and find it hillarious, but it's amazing the anecdotes you'll get from people if you compare notes. I found it helped me see it all in a different light - instead of fighting to suppress the urge to bitch about it all the time, I got to laugh about it. (Much easier once you no longer live with them, however.)
For example, my first year roommate slept in a nylon sleeping bag on top of her bed all year (which she didn't ever wash as far as I could tell), sat about in her underwear studying a lot of the time, answered the door in her underwear and scared my friends (and nearly caused the guy I was going out with at the time to get a black eye when I decided he wasn't going to see this :P - oh, and she called him by the name of a different guy I'd been after a couple of times when I'd just got together with him, but that may just have been innocent confusion), went on a health kick after a few months and decided to jog at 6am every morning then come back and dry her hair at 7am-7.30am - sometimes unplugging my alarm clock from the four way adapter I had plugged into 'my' plug, to do so. Kept complaining about my music stopping her from studying; went to bed ridiculously early (in order to deal with the 6am start I suppose - and I'd put 8am and later on my form!); always played music when she was going to sleep - which kept me awake on the few occasions when I went to bed early; kept complaining about me sitting up trying to study with my lamp on keeping her awake so I had to go and use the study room - which she never did; had long and loud phone conversations with people ridiculously early; piled loads of stuff up on my desk; monopolised the radiator with her drying underwear a *lot* of the time, and hung one of those godawful motivational posters on the wall directly opposite my bed so it was the first thing I saw when I woke up every morning. First year was not my most fun accomodation year.
Nonetheless, when I compared notes with people, I heard some real horror stories, which made the ones about my dear darling ex-roommate seem trivial. Roommate had her positive points as well on a few occasions, I suppose, even if a fair number of them are "well, she never did anything quite like *that*". And when I reflect on things, I must have got on her nerves too - always coming back home late after she was in bed and being my usual less than tidy self in my side of the room, for example. Oh, and After we moved out, I only ever saw her once before we both graduated. I suppose on balance, it could have been worse.
So, come on, what's everyone else's roommate-from-hell stories then? (Can you tell I'm skiving an essay? :))