I live in a beautiful brick house on Wertland Street — so beautiful, in fact, that the rental company is already pressuring my roommates and me to resign.
This notice, received in the form of an ominous letter about a week ago, said we have until this Wednesday to resign or they will give the contract to another group of students. Don’t two years in the same place earn us some loyalty? We feel so disposable.
The absurdity of the situation lies in the lack of time sensitivity. Less than a month after school starts, students begin to feel tremendous pressure to find a place to live. I, unfortunately, am about to lose six roommates to the doom of a certain ceremonious day in May which I refuse to mention — the future is both unpredictable and haunting as I enter the search for compatible roommates for my last year at the University.
What if they don’t flush? What if they drunkenly eat my pizza? What if they listen to Justin Bieber? Or worse, what if they make me lose my spot in a “Breaking Bad” episode? The daunting task ahead seems like an uphill battle; a new form of speed dating I am ill-prepared to take on so early in the year. Luckily, I can look contemptuously at the rental companies and know I have a reasonable scapegoat at which to direct my anger.
I may come off as a War Hawk in my writing, but as a third-year, I have been down this road once or twice before. I am irked year after year by the obnoxious rental companies monopolizing all the living places in the neighborhoods in walking distance of Grounds.
My real sympathies, however, lie with first-years. Those doe-eyed, Sperry-wearing, quick-to-compliment, constantly lost first-years now must decide for the first time ever who to live with — all in their first couple of months ever living away from home. Their ability to make smart drinking decisions, let alone informed living situation decisions, is questionable. But the problems they face are two-fold.
A first-year’s friend group can change as easily as his grades from before midterms to after. But contracts usually mean first-years are stuck with the people they went out with during the first month of school, before their roommate’s antics really got on their nerves.
The seven months to follow are filled with Greek recruitment, a new semester of classes, the joining of new organizations, the overlapping of love lives and all the other social settings a first-year encounters. It’s easy to meet a slew of new people in one semester at the University, not to mention in an entire year.
The pressure of selecting your future roommates now not only hinders potential new friendships that might form later in the year, but also forces students to prematurely jump into a living situation as painful as a 9 a.m. Friday class. Well, I’m not one equipped to tackle all this now — after all, I’ve got some roommates to find!
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