Beginning this academic year, I was terrified because I was entering the world of roommates. I was right to be fearful. Fall 2018 was almost six months and three sets of roommates ago. Thanks to the Housing Office’s oh so great system of first come first serve, students can end up with an assortment of roommates, and just in case it was lost in translation, that was sarcasm. This system has resulted in a few roommate horror stories that I can laugh at (now anyway).

The first two roommate sets were definitely the worst (even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t tell you, I still live with the third roommate set), let’s start with set number one. We will call these women Goddess (because she thought she was one) and Joe (because it’s a solid name). According to MyHousing, students are assigned not only roommates, but rooms as well. There were three beds in my suite, bed one being in a single room and beds two and three being in a double room. I was assigned bed two and Joe was given bed three, lucky us.

Skip ahead to move in day and Joe steals the single, aka Goddess’ room, leaving me with an apparent problem child who was too passive aggressive to ask for her room. The complaining went on for weeks. From Joe’s music to her boyfriend, Goddess always had to stick her nose where it didn’t belong, and guess who heard it all?

Goddess liked to pretend that she was the only one cleaning the room, but she was the problem. She would brush her teeth in the kitchen sink, a sink that was five feet from the bathroom. For those who are wondering, yes there was a working sink in the bathroom, Goddess was just gross.

I left that situation after she went postal on me for a ridiculous reason. We had been using the same shower schedule for the weeks we’d lived together, but one morning she decided that she wanted to shower before me. There was only one problem, I had already showered. Goddess called me a “dickhead” and “allegedly” threw my personal belongs onto the ground. Living with someone who was obviously competing for the title of America’s Sweetheart was hard and it didn’t even last all of fall quarter. Anyone dealing with serious or even threatening roommate problems should contact one of their resident assistants (RAs).

The third roommate (second set for those who are counting) was literally one floor down from my first two roommates. So, I was able to leave the first apartment almost completely in an hour without alerting Goddess. Lucky me, I had my own room and lived in a smell that can only be described as a dumpster fire that was actively eating rotting fish and spoiled milk. The problem with roommate number three was more concrete, she was the sloppiest person I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting and I was introduced to the world of someone who really did not care about her surroundings or my well being.

From the brown mystery stains in the bathroom to the naked cooking, this woman was living her best life. Her best life came at a cost though, my sense of sight, smell and my sanity. Have no fear though the brown stains were not feces, they were feces and vomit. Isn’t learning fun?

The worst part of the ordeal was that I lived with one roommate. How could one person make such a huge mess? I guess I’ll never know because that roommate left without so much as a goodbye. She did leave me a few gifts though. A broken fan and every piece of trash that she could not be bothered to deal with. Gotta love a giver.

Fall quarter feels so long ago now. Thankfully, I now have a decent roommate that I hardly ever see or hear (what an upgrade). And none of my stuff has mysteriously appeared on the floor in six months.

I think that the Housing Office should actually use those information surveys that we have to fill out so we can end up with roommates that we actually feel compatible with. What is the point of us filling out those online forms if no matter what we do we end up living with whoever? Not everyone is comfortable rolling the dice, especially if they could end up being stuck with a control freak or a slob.