Six days 'til Thirty...College Roommates...

It's that lovely time of the year where all 540 residents of my building check out. The lobby is always somewhat chaotic as students and their families mill about with room-fulls of belongings, mini-fridges, and almost any ransom thing you can think of.  Keys and tons of paperwork are strewn about the main desk.  There is also a constant stream of goodbyes happening thought the day.  From the casual bro handshake-into-a-one-armed-back-slap-hug to the tearful goodbyes of roommates whom will genuinely miss each other over the next few months.  It's a process I have observed 12 times over the past 12 years. In some aspects, this job really desensitizes you to goodbyes. Every year, I say goodbye, in some cases forever, to students as well as professional staff members whom I have come to care for a great deal. Transition and turnover is the name of the game.  Early on in my career, it was extremely hard to go through these goodbyes each year, but with each passing year, it just becomes such a routine that you develop a thick skin for it. That's not to say that it still isn't difficult or sad, but your emotions just get accustomed to it and you deal with it differently.

But I digress...the point of today's post is roommates. Seeing all of the goodbyes between roommates today...some sad and emotional, some with elation, got me thinking about all of my college roommates in undergrad.  I had six...in four years.  Six. Let's go through them shall we?

Freshman Year. Nick.

Nick was the first roommate I had in college.  I was understandably nervous about the prospect of living with a stranger whom I knew nothing about.  There also was no Facebook or MySpace or other such social media platforms to do any reconnaissance work ahead of time like students today do with no thought.  I had no idea what this kid looked like or what he liked or anything.  I received his name and phone number in the mail and we talked (via landline) to decide who was going to bring what to the room.

We probably talked twice on the phone and he seemed pretty cool and laidback.  Plus he was bringing all kinds of cool gadgets and electronics to our room in Cone Hall.  Which, by the way, was smaller than most of the rooms that my students complain about today.  Here's a floor plan...which has been renovated because our furniture, minus the beds, were bolted to the walls and we had actual closets:

  Anywho...Nick was pretty cool roommate.  He was out-of-state from Georgia, very laid back, and we got along really well.  We hung out a lot and didn't have any issues at all.  I had gotten really lucky.  Unfortunately, Nick was not the "schoolin" type.  He didn't go to class that much, hated doing homework, and hated his professors.  It was unfortunate because he was crazy smart.  He was also on his way back to Georgia permanently by early December of that semester.  Sigh.

Oh Well, I thought, I got lucky the first time, I'm sure my new roommate will be cool too.  Plus, I have the room to myself for the rest of the semester!  Having been involved in our Hall Council and having gotten pretty close with the RD...I tried to see if there was any way to keep that spot vacant.  Which is funny now, because students ask me that all the time.  Of course, there was somebody assigned to Nick's spot by the following semester.

Bring in roommate number two...Wasshisname.  I kidd you not...I cannot remember his name.  Spoiler Alert:  This roommate wasn't great.  (Brandon?  I think his name was Brandon.  Olin...do you remember?)  In any case, this roommate did all of the things that bad roommates do:  He ate all of my food without asking, he was dirty and left his stuff all over the room, he had sex while I was in the room (our beds were bunked), he used my computer without asking, and pretty much used whatever belongings of mine he wanted, let his friends sleep or sit on my bed OR let his friends use my computer...all with no permission.  But the worst thing about Wasshisname was...He smelled.  Like really really REALLY bad.  My friends Cassie and Keturi came to visit one weekend and they couldn't even go into the room because it smelled so bad that you would gag.

As I alluded to several times throughout these blog posts, I used to be really quiet and shy and was completely non-confrontational.  I didn't want to rock the boat so I never mentioned it to my RD.  Also ironic given my current profession.  My how things change.

So was I miserable the whole semester?  Surprisingly no...because I basically didn't live in my room.  I stayed...almost every night...with my friends Olin and Brian on the floor above.  They had a futon and didn't mind me staying there as much as I did.  In fact, Olin and I are still good friends to this day =)

Needless to say, I most certainly was not going to room with Wasshisname again (which he asked me to btw...probably because I was never around.  I said no) and I had made plans to live with a friend I had met in the building named Taylor.

Sophomore Year.  Taylor.

I already knew that Taylor and I were going to get a long.  We had known each other for most of the previous year and Taylor was the RA.  We had both followed our previous RD to another building with much bigger rooms.  An all male residence hall called Justice Hall:

Taylor was a great roommate.  We got along well, our circle of friends overlapped, we had similar cleanliness and had set up our room pretty well.  It was a good semester.  The only issue was...Taylor liked to, let's say, partake in activities that were incongruent with a successful RA.  Haha.  I used to say to Taylor all the time..."Don't get fired.  I don't want a new roommate."  And he assured me that he wouldn't.  Welp...at the beginning of the the Spring semester, Taylor and many other RAs were at a gathering and all "decided" that it would be best to "resign" after that gathering.  So there went roommate number two...and I was faced with getting a new roommate once again. 

This time I wasn't too worried.  One, the roommate would be the new RA, so he had to be somewhat sane, and I had my friend group and a new boyfriend.  And I pretty much stayed in his room every night (he was also an RA).  Kyle was hired to replace Taylor.  And Kyle was a really cool guy too, but I really didn't get to know him that well at all because I was always with Brandon.  I also didn't know him so I didn't feel the need to tell him that he was forced to live with a gay.  In fact, Kyle was talking about me never being around to our RD, his boss, and the RD said, "Oh, Cory's just always at his boyfriend's place" and Kyle was like "Ohhh, He's Gay!  I thought he just didn't like me or something!"  Kyle and I got along just fine...but never really got close because I was never around.

I told the story many posts ago about how I went about selecting the following year's roommate.  So then there was:

Junior Year.  Bryan.

Bryan was by far, my most successful roommate.  First of all, we made it through the whole year.  He was an RA in the same building...Justice.  We had an awesome room with a private bathroom that had a full tub and shower.  We had an incredible hulk themed bathroom...c'mon...how awesome is that?  Bryan and I had known each other since Freshman year and hung out a lot the previous year in his room playing Super Tennis on the SNES.  It was a great year.  We bickered like the odd couple...mainly about dishes.  I hate doing dishes and Bryan would want me to wash my plate halfway through my meal.  We had an illegal turtle.  Bryan broke things in anger when he played video games.  It was great.  I didn't mind that his girlfriend (now wife) was our third roommate and he didn't mind that Brandon was over all the time.  More than just roommates, we were really good friends, and still are to this day (although we don't talk nearly as much as we should...psh...adulthood).  We helped each other through some tough times.  All was well.  You'll have to read through my old posts to see some other interesting stories surrounding our roommateship and we decided that we would live together again the following year.  I can't really remember 100% why we decided to live in the same suite the following year and not the same room...it may have been partly because of the story I referenced before and partly because our friend Mike needed a roommate.  Originally, we had a roommate picked out, but things didn't work out according to plan so I had to go potluck for my roommate in our suite for my senior year.  Which brings us to...

Senior Year.  Edward.

Senior year we moved to Newland Hall:

I'll admit it.  I tried my damnedest to scare Edward away before he even arrived.  The poor sophomore never had a chance.  I sent him an e-mail saying:  "Hi, I'm your new roommate.  I'm a Senior and me and the two other Senior Suitemates have known each other for years.  Also I have all of the stuff we need in our room so you don't have to bring much.  Also I'm gay, so if you have an issue with that, you should look somewhere else for housing because I'm not moving."  Now I paraphrasing, but that's pretty close.  And I didn't hear from him all summer long and started to think that my little plan worked until I received a reply:  "Hi.  I'm Edward.  I'm bringing my X-box.  See you in a few days!"  Sigh.  Looking back, I was pretty rude to Edward.  Not in an active way (besides that e-mail), but I didn't really care to get to know him.  He was a sophomore and didn't speak much.  He also wasn't in the room very much.  And full disclosure:  I thought his name was William for the first 3 weeks of school.  Like, I said "You've reached Cory and William" on our outgoing message on our answering machine.  I called him William so much that Bryan and Mike also called him that.  Oops.  Also his mother was a real live Stepford Wife.  Perfectly Quaffed and dripping with 1950's womanly charm. 

So that's my roommate adventures going through college.  It's quite humorous considering all of the roommate issues I try to get students through successfully.  Karma I suppose.  I wouldn't have changed anything though.  Actually...If Bryan and I had been roommates Freshman year, we may have continued all four years, but alas...that's not what happened.

That's all for now.

BYEEEEEE!