How to Survive the Roommate Experience

Guidelines to Enhance the Quality of Your Living

Today’s world is blessed with advantages previous generations were never able to enjoy. The planet is wired from end-to-end with electronic communication capabilities that allows anyone to talk to anyone else anywhere in the world with any number of tools, such as the World Wide Web, cell phones, and an ever-increasing knowledge of telepathy. Reports from Belgium say roughly 1 in 6 Belgians are capable of playing DVDs (Digital Video Discs) by opening their hand and speaking directly into it.
With all this blessed (or cursed) technology, however, comes a higher standard of living that, at times, is tough to keep up with financially. Try showing up to class with an iPod made in November 2004 and you’ll look like the village poor kid. No one wants to be that kid. 

To accommodate for this pricing boom, young adults are living in more confined spaces with more roommates than ever before. Just last week, I saw twenty-three (23!) rodeo clowns walking out of a one-bedroom in downtown Burlington, Vermont. What were they doing there? I can’t say for sure, but it definitely looked to me like they were living. Practicing, yes, but also living. 

How, then, can you adjust to this new, expensive lifestyle? It’s quite simple, if you follow these basic principles:

1. Never, under any circumstances, room with a member of the opposite sex. 

Sure, it might seem like a good idea to let the hot European transfer student with an open mind move into your pad, but do you really think she’s going to play Madden with you all night while you talk about how hot she is? Also, girls are (perhaps stereotypically) believed to have cooties, and boys are never interested in “just talking.” It’s simply not a good fit. 

2. Never succumb to paying your full share of the rent.