How to Live with Your Roommate

The influence of roommates on one another is great.

Your roommate will likely:

• Challenge your confidence.
• Encourage you to become more tolerant.
• Facilitate changes in your attitudes about things.
• Affect your study habits: if you enter a room and your roommate is studying, chances are 3 in 4 that you will also sit down and study.
• Affect your grade point average: roommate conflict and incompatibility are correlated positively with academic difficulty and low achievement. Likewise roommate compatibility is associated with high achievement. While high achievers bring up low achievers the reverse is generally not true.

How to Enhance the Positive Influence You Have on Each Other

1. At the very beginning of your relationship - within the first few days - inventory your habits and preferences: smoking or non-smoking, tidy or casual, stay up late or get up early, punk rock or classical jazz, study alone or with others, etc.

2. Work out strategies of compromise for your differences.

3. When you are irritated (or pleased) with your roommate, express it directly and immediately. Don't store up resentments and explode when she/he commits a minor offence. Don't discuss your roommate problems with others when you haven't discussed them with your roommate.

4. There are at least two sides to every story. Hear your roommate out. Try to see things from his/her perspective rather than jumping to conclusions.

5. Most problems can be resolved or alleviated. If you can't work out the situation with your roommate - and you've actually tried doing so instead of assuming that it can't be done - ask for assistance from someone who will be objective, such as a mutual friend, who is not directly affected by the situation, or a resident Don. This person can meet with you and your roommate to help you resolve the problem.

Living with a roommate can be an excellent experience in learning more about yourself and about how to communicate and relate effectively to others. Knowing how to assert yourself and how to empathize with others are valuable skills in all relationships -- family, social, school and work.