Survival of the Fittest (Roommate Edition)

Creator

Stephanie Ziegler, SUNY Cortland

Preview

Creation Date

11-2023

Description

The topic I chose to teach was “How to Live with a Roommate/Residence Hall Living”. My presentation was based off my experience here at Cortland, and resources available to each student. Being a sophomore, I have lived in a double now for three semesters. In these three semesters, I have had three roommates. My first semester, my roommate and I did not get along at all. My second semester, I moved in with one of my best friends and learned that living with friends can be hard. This semester I roomed with someone I knew from a club I am in involved in on campus, and she has become one of my best friends here.

Living with someone that you don’t know can be challenging and have lots of ups and downs. The goal of this lesson is to learn how to live with someone, how to handle any problems you may be having, and to understand the resources available to students.

In high school, I read this book called the Naked Roommate in this class called Senior Seminar. This class was to help prepare us for college. The author Harlan Cohen wrote a whole chapter about roommates, and it is titled “Roommates: Good Ones, Bad Ones, and Everything in Between”. One helpful tip that he gives is creating a roommate contract...I know for myself, I knew about this and used it to my advantage each semester. If you and your roommate have different classroom and sleeping schedules, then you and your roommate should set a time that is quiet hours in your room that you and your roommate will both respect. For example, 11 PM to 8 AM on the weekdays. In addition, decide with your roommate when each of you can have the room for privacy, set boundaries for each other, etc.

In the book The Naked Roommate, rule number fourteen states that “The Ultimate Roommate Rule The Tip is Respect each other’s differences and make rules before you need rules”. As stated before, a tip that can help is to create room rules together to avoid uncomfortable situations that could become big problems in the future. This could include “things like smoking in the room, overnight guests, sharing food, and cleaning needed rules to avoid big problems” (Cohen 2007).