Originally Posted by IrishLake
My roomate freshman year was horrible - God-awful. I thought things would go ok at first. We had the same major, talked on the phone a few times to coordinate what we were each bringing. First few days went ok. We went to meals together, etc. It was all downhill from there. Her mom was a school bus driver back hom in west virginia, and the roomie would get up at 4:30-5AM to call her mom on the phone and talk every day. Seriously? I had an 8am Chemistry class that I didnt want to go to in the first palce, let alone when I didn't get enough sleep. Then after talking to her mom, she would turn on the radio to the Bob and Tom show. Now that I'm an adult, I can find humor in B&T, but back then... they were just old guys that laughed really loud and woke me up even more. THEN she had a damn coffee machine (espresso? cuppachino? I don't know, but it was loud), and she put it on top of my fridge which served as my bedside table and it was loud as hell. All of this at 5AM. I kinda figured she was a little on the odd side when she would walk around the room naked or in her skivvies (she was not even close to being a small girl), and talk about how good she was at bellydancing, how it was a great core woorkout, etc. Then she'd talk about the infection her belly button piercing got and the skin around it rotted off and the ring fell out when she was lifeguarding. Then she'd tell me about her horrible yeast infections... and the next day try to persuade me to let her loan me one of her bathing suits so we could go swimming together at the rec. Seriously, you think I'm going to wear someone elses bathing suit after being told about horrible yeast infectiosn and rotting bellybutton skin? HA!
I was a pretty social person, I liked to go out with the other friends I had, and tuesday night was the weeknight to go out (because no one had early morning class on wednesdays, it was reserved for Chapel service time). Even on other weeknights, I would go visiting to other rooms in my hall, go grab a pizza late, etc. She had the balls to ask me if I could be in our room by 9pm every night because I woke her up when I came home late (I would come in, see she was asleep, and quietly go to bed myself). Um, no. I refused to even consider it especially since she woke me up at 5am every morning with no attempt to be quiet. One time she asked if she and one of her friends could come with me and my friends to a frat house on a weekend night. I told her sure of course, but it was really important for us not to leave without telling the other (safety first!). Naturally, she and her friend left without telling anyone after being there for about an hour.
Then I decided to go through sorority rush. Anytime I was within earshot of her, I heard all about how dumb, bratty, snotty, bitchy, etc she thought sorority girls were. Wonderful. Our RA heard her one time and reminded the roomie that RA was an Alpha Xi herself, and that it wasn't nice to stereotype. Didn't sway roomie's opinion in the slightest.
Well naturally, being greek meant some late nights during our new member period (no, not hazing, but we'd have NM education nights until 9 or 10pm some nights, we'd also have movie night at the house, etc.) I would come back from class in the afternoon, or after an event at night, kick off my shoes, change out of my clothes and put on my robe, grab my shower caddy and head to the bathroom to shower. At least 5 times she would leave or go to sleep and shut and lock the door. She knew I was in the shower, and my room key was attached to my wallet which would be sitting on the dresser right next to the door, but she would still shut and lock the door. It was my dumb fault for not learning my lesson after the first time and taking my key with me everywhere, but I didn't see the need if I was going to be nearby. But she even did it one afternoon when I was in the room across the hall (door was open, she could easily see me in there laying on the floor while our neighbor/my pledge sister was sketching me for her art class), left and shut and locked the door and I didn't have my key. My RA felt bad always charging me $1 for letting me back into my room, so she stopped. She knew my roomate was doing it maliciously. The worst episode was she went to bed at 8pm the night before our 7am biology final, and I wanted to continue studying. So I told her I was going to the lounge to study and that I wasn't taking my key. I came back to our room around 11... and the door was shut and locked. I went to the on-duty RA (not mine) and he wasn't opening his door. My RA was gone, the hall was dead due to finals. I pounded on the door, called our room - nothing. I ended up pulling an all nighter and falling asleep at about 3 on the floor in front of my door. When I heard her alarm go off at 5AM, I started pounding on the door. She didn't have a choice but to let me in then. I told her one of us needed to find a new roomate for the second quarter. She played dumb and I failed my final.
The next quarter, she moved out. Thank goodness! I had the room to myself for the remainder of the year. She ended up meeting some guy online and marrying him and moving to my hometown. I about shit my pants the first time I saw her at MY mall.
My story pales in comparison to my friend/sister Krista's though. Krista was a tiny, mildly annoying but very sweet girl. She and her roomate butted heads from the beginning. The roomate got mad when Krista had to get up for 8am classes and would wake her up (even though Krista would creep quietly around their room using a flashlight). At like 4AM one morning, the roomate pulled Krista from her top bunk and beat the living hell out of her. Krista had a fractured hand, 2 black eyes, and stitches in 2 places in her face. The roomate had been slamming Krista's head against the wall. Someone finally heard Krista screaming and came running. What did our college do? Simply moved the roomate out of their room and into a room down the hall from me. They wanted to keep it hush hush. She was never arrested, not expelled, nothing. She ended up dropping out later in the year, but Krista was terrified after that. Krista's parents encouraged her to press charges against the school and the roomate, but Krista refused, she just wanted it to be over with. She lived alone the rest of freshman year and almost didn't live on the Theta floor of the sorority dorm our sophomore year. The only reason she did was because we were all sisters and not strangers.
I lived with sisters the remainder of college, and never had any major issues. (One girl had trouble cleaning up after herself, but she got the hint when we would take her mess or dirty dishes out of the common area and put them on her bed).
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