Some Tips if You Want to Annoy Your Roommate

When I arrived on campus with my parents as escorts I had the kind of butterflies in my stomach that felt more like hummingbirds. I had never spent more than a weekend away from my family and though the college was a mere 2-hour drive from my hometown it seemed like a world away from my comfort zone.

I would be starting my junior year of college, having completed my associates degree at the community college, and planned to live in the dormitory. I met my roommate the day I arrived at school.

We were not women who would have been friends had we not been thrown together in a 10 by 12 room to coexist for 9 months. She was 2 years older than I and had changed her major at least 4 times. Every time she heard of a new career she would exclaim "I always wanted to do that!" and I would expect another change in her course of study.

She went home every weekend, just as I did, but when she went home she packed every item of clothing in her suitcase and brought it with her. Upon returning to our room each Sunday, she would prop her suitcase open in the middle of the room and leave it there, piled high with clothes, until Friday when she'd repeat the process. Perhaps it would have been less inconvenient had the suitcase been a small carry-on size bag but no, this was more like a suitcase you would take if you were traveling for a week or more.

This habit, which caused me to have to peer over a mountain of clothing if I happened to want to watch television, wasn't the only thing I found difficult about living with a woman to whom I wasn't related. She had a unique alarm clock that she rarely heard the first time it crowed. Yes, it literally crowed like a rooster. She had a rather unhealthy obsession with Oprah and often cried holding Oprah's book. She complained about the size of her chest yet wore tight-fitting tops that accentuated its size.

That first experience living with another female (besides my mom) really scared me off from wanting to have a roommate again, so the next year I opted to live in the dorm in a single room...but I lucked out and got a "double-sized" room without the roommate. It turned out I often had a roommate anyway since my best friend had finished her associate degree and transferred to complete her bachelor's degree. She was living with her parents in a small town about 40 miles away so she often "studied at the library" and the crashed on the extra bed in my dorm room. Those days with her reassured me that it was actually possible for me to live with another woman and not want to kill her. Of course it helps if you have similar personalities and values.

I do sometimes wonder if my first roommate ever did follow through any course of study to fruition. I imagine they are adding new degree programs every few years for those jobs that simply didn't exist a few years ago. I'll bet she always wanted to do that though.