Roommates are a wild bunch, by nature, by definition. A major part of the college experience is being thrown in with a complete stranger and forced to live with them, adapt to them and somehow learn to get along without killing one another. In my view, given the roommates I’ve had over the years, they should start giving out degrees just for that, but no, no.
You’re expected to figure it out all your own. We’ve devised a handy guide to some of the most difficult-to-get-along-with roommates. When in doubt, use it as a reference, or don’t be afraid to “accidentally” set it as the homepage on your roommate’s computer. Just saying. And don’t forget to click here for more back to school content!
Contents
How To Deal With Your Annoying Roommate
Source: Xbodyshape
The Bossy Roommate
Don’t leave that there. Don’t put that over there! Bossypants roommates are all up in your business trying to tell you what to do. Kindly tell her as long as your life doesn’t reasonably upset her life in any reasonable way, she’s gotta learn how to deal.
The Mean Girl
We’d like to think that Mean Girls stop being Mean Girls when they graduate from high school. That they go out and get lives and realize that being catty and nasty to other girls is hardly fulfilling. Sadly, that’s simply not the case for many Mean Girls, and too often, they continue down the Mean Girl path and become snooty cubicle mates or undermining assistants. In any case, you can try killing a Mean Girl with kindness, or you can preserve your energy and ignore her as much as possible. Whatever you do: Don’t get sucked into the Mean Girl cycle–it absolutely will come back to bite you in the ass.
The Needy Girl
Where are you going? What are you doing? Can I come with? If this sounds like your roommate, have some patience, some pity, and a print out of extracurricular campus activities. Roommate love is … pawning her off on the school newspaper or crew team.
Front view portrait of two angry students studying looking each other with hate
The Messy One
We all have different ideas of what clean means. For a special few–future hoarders and contestants on the Style Network’s “Clean House”–this word has no meaning at all. If you happen to live with one of these charming types, feel free to set up a cleaning schedule. When that inevitably fails, offer them the alternative of paying for a cleaning service. That should help motivate their butts to do it.
The Control Freak
This girl has probably never had to share her space with anyone before and is positively freaking inside at the idea of your “Twilight” poster mucking up the post-Impressionist pink and purple theme she journal-ed about last May before she even sent her college applications out. That’s why you need to establish your mega-dominance early on. The “Twilight” poster stays! Oh, and did you happen to hint that “Twilight” is only the tip of your goth-y iceberg? Once she realizes it could be so much worse she’ll have no choice but to relax her control sphincter and learn how to compromise.
The Sycophant
My God, woman! Haven’t you seen “The Roommate”? This isn’t going to end well. Get yourself a new room assignment, pronto.
Original by Julie Gerstein
