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Five Types of College Roommates
College Roomies: All Types
So you’re headed off to college. You’ve got your new college wardrobe, your brand new laptop, and maybe a crappy but cool car to get you around. You’re experiencing anxiety (your books cost your entire scholarship, oh, and your firstborn son), excitement (you just found out where the cheerleaders practice!), disappointment (your new place is the size of a post office box), and more excitement (the cheerleaders live next door!). Then comes perhaps the most important discovery of all: your roommate. Although the two of you have been thrown together by pure cosmic chance, this person will make or break your school year.
Roommates come in many shapes and sizes. Some will save your life. Others will make you want to take theirs. Most of all, love them or hate them, you are stuck with them. In tribute to these indispensable characters, I give you my list of five types of roommates: 
The Buddy/The BFF
If you’re lucky, you got this one. They buy you food, introduce you to beautiful people, make your bed for you, and like the same movies you do. Buddy/BFF is clean but not to the point of making you feel bad that you aren’t. When a love interest comes to call, Buddy/BFF gives you your space and lets you work your mojo.
When their parents come to town and take them to dinner, they insist on bringing you along. Their mom sends care packages on a weekly basis, of which you become a direct beneficiary.
The Buddy usually also brings with them a spectacular entertainment system, a DVD library, a high performance gaming console, and a ridiculous amount of video games that he freely shares with all. The BFF brings with her an insanely stocked wardrobe with dozens of shoes and accessories that she insists you use.
The Buddy’s/BFF’s motto: “Mi casa es su casa.” My advice: Keep your friends close, but keep the Buddy/BFF closer. 
The Klepto
Your cologne or perfume has been disappearing faster than your free time. Shirts you just washed are found misplaced and with the unmistakable scent of body odor. Your food vanishes from the pantry. Scratches appear inexplicably on your DVDs. You could have sworn you had $20 in your lucky jar; now there is only $13 and some odd coins. Caution: you’re rooming with the Klepto.
The Klepto is congenial to your face, but, when they think you’re not looking, they are eyeballing your stuff with envy. They have a habit of leaving with their hand under their jacket just as you’re coming in. You have a strong feeling that they are trying to get away with something.
At their most frightening, Kleptos envy you and your stuff so much that they may actually try to steal your identity. Other, more benign tendencies include stealing your significant other, stealing your towel, and stealing your ideas. In some instances, Kleptos have been known to buy gifts for their victims out of guilt for pillaging their stuff.
The Klepto’s motto: “Su casa es mi casa.” My advice: Buy a padlock and safe and install a hidden camera in your room. 
The Slob
Unwashed dishes pile up in the sink. You haven’t seen your carpet in weeks, and a mass of dirty clothes and debris is now slowly inching down the hall. A vomit-inducing aroma is creeping from your roommate’s tower of Taco Bell containers. You’ve never seen your roommate do their laundry… ever. Your roommate doesn’t own any hygiene items- zero. Alas, you’ve been paired with the Slob.
Ah, the frustrating Slob- lovably low-stress but terrifyingly foul. They are cool with whatever you want to do. You never feel pressure to keep your stuff in order. Especially good, Slobs have been known to be very generous. But you also wouldn’t be surprised if the next Black Plague originated from their clothes hamper. Between the remnants of their last dinner experiment and their intestinal fanfare every five minutes, the ozone layer is thinning faster than the fabric on the cushions under the Slob’s sweaty rear end.
The Slob’s motto: “Let it be.” My advice: A bonfire and a truckload of air freshener. 
The Vampire
They are deathly pale and as silent as the grave. They prefer black light or no light at all. They sleep during the day and slip out of the house at night. When you try to strike up some conversation, they speak only under their breath, uttering muffled incantations about your impending doom. These are sure signs that you are living with the Vampire.
But, honestly, if you can get over the paranoid thought of getting the blood sucked out of your veins and being transformed into one of their blood lusting minions, living with the Vampire isn’t so bad. In fact, you pretty much have the whole place to yourself. They usually keep very little food (apparently, fresh blood provides the majority of their daily nutritional needs). And they tend to display a visible abhorrence for the possessions of the living. So you don’t need to worry about the Klepto stuff. On the other hand, if you crave socialization, you will need to look elsewhere.
The Vampire’s motto: something about enveloping the world in eternal darkness. My advice: Garlic tablets. 
The Serious Student
You can live with the Slob and the Vampire. Heck, with some decent security precautions, you can even live with the Klepto. Ironically, however, the most difficult of roommates is the Serious Student. Serious Student went to college to study, earn as many degrees as possible, capture a Nobel Prize, and then take over the world. Having fun, socializing, and the general sound of happiness kindles in the Serious Student the deepest disgust and wrath.
The Serious Student is known to demand the highest degree of silence and reverence while studying. Any disruptive noise or action will throw the Serious Student into a silent, pent up fit. This usually consists of the Serious Student glaring at the offender with all due hatred, slamming their books shut, rising dreadfully from their desk, leaving the room, and then slamming a door. All of this is done without words.
Fortunately, should you happen to offend the Serious Student, you are less likely to see them. If you happen to be in the room at the same time, they will first make their disdain for you known and then they will exit. The more you offend the Serious Student, the less they will be seen.
The Serious Student’s motto: “Can’t you see how important my existence is?” My advice: offend them as often as possible.
Everybody’s got them. What types of roommates have you had? Share your roommate comments below…
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10 Comments
I lived in the dorms at my college for two years, both years sharing a suite with 3 other guys. Despite living with different people both years, they all fell into similar roles. So heres three additional types of roommates:
1: the metrosexual: this guy probably has more clothes than most of the girls in the dorm. Your side of the closet will look barren compared to his. Their beauty products will fill most of the available shower/sink space, and if both of you have class at the same time, make sure to shower before they do, otherwise you’ll be waiting 30 mins to get ready.
2: the stoner: gotta love these guys. They occupy the bathroom for an entirely different reason, and as long as they attempt to cover their tracks, are fairly harmless. The stoner is always down for hanging out, playing video game, watching TV, having “deep” philosophical conversations. Befriend the stoner and they might share the goods.
3: the tool: similar to the serious student, the tool is a pain to be around. They tend to be selfish, hiding any food they might have, enjoy children’s anime or other unwatchable television, constantly complain to the R.A. and rat on their roommates, are completely close-minded to any college experimentation, and are the natural enemy of the stoner. Not only should you offend the tool at any opportunity, but also steal his stuff any time he neglects to hide it or lock it up.
Here’s one:
The Noise Factory:
This roomate loves to be as noisy as possible, playing music and television shows on the highest volume setting. And often the shows and music are crappy. For some reason their biological clocks are twisted, because they like to watch TV at 4:00 in the morning. They also love to have shouting discussions at every second of the day. Solution to deal with these roomates: fight fire with fire. Crank up your rock music to drown out their crap music.
The Roommate
This is just a normal, everyday roommate. He is nice enough to be around, but you don’t hang out with him. It is not that she isn’t pleasant, you just have different tastes. You know one or two of his friends, and they are nice, just not people you would want to have fun with. And you know what, that is perfectly fine. You are roomies, not buddies. On the bright side, there will never be any friend drama in your room. On the down side, your room can be awful quite sometimes…
This was me and my roommate last year.
Here’s another
The Lonely Girlfriend/Boyfriend: Most often female, this roommate will spend hours talking with their significant other, whether it be via phone, Skype or AIM. They constantly moan about how they miss their “Sweetums”, and complain incessantly about how far the trip is, how expensive it is to travel, and how little they get to see them. It is especially difficult to live with the Lonely Girlfriend/Boyfriend if you yourself are in a relationship, long distance or no, as any chance you have at alone time with your honey is shot down with a murderous, jealous glare. They will often stay inside all weekend, saying their “Babycakes” doesn’t like it when they go out. Beware when the inevitable breakup happens: they will spin out of control, quickly becoming a trainwreck to avoid at all costs!
Chris, maybe if you stop stealing peoples food and being such a piece of shit they won’t rat you out to the RA as much.
I was a serious student in school. I made my presence very known, and even helped send a few losers back home to live with mommy and daddy.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game…
What do you guys think of this.
I am a graduate student living with two under. I am very busy with my study, so I stay in my office most of time and only go home to get some sleep. (I seldom go home before 10pm, and I usually leave by 8:30am unless its the weekend, then I will be sleeping in, but still manage to leave around 12pm).
Apparently my roommates have problem with that. One of them is an anal-retentive. On some special occation when I have done something she doesn’t like, such as wash and rince a glass then put it back in the cabinet instead of the washer, she will post sticky notes all over the place. I can handle face to face confrontation very well. But these notes annoys the hell out of me. Eventually I confronted her, and learned she is not happy because I am not doing my share of the house chore, such as cleaning and doing dishes. The thing is though, by not staying in the house all day, I don’t leave any mess around in the common area, and I rarely eat at home…..
I’d rather have someone who is a slob and do nothing, then having an anal-retentive person as roommate…
My freshman year of college I had the perfect roommate-for me. We had a lot of interests in common, liked the same music, liked peace and quiet, even had the same best friend (the girl had moved from my roommate’s town to mine a few years previously). She was neat, quiet, respectful, didn’t party, funny, laughed at my jokes, easy to talk to. But I always had the nagging suspicion that she didn’t like being my roommate. I wasn’t the cleanest (clothes on the floor), liked to watch tv (with headphones, but the set buzzed), and preferred procrastinating to doing homework. She never said anything about it, but even now I wonder how she felt about the whole thing.
What about the Alcoholic Roommate? That was my freshman experience.
2 sober nights a week, which was great for me (since she often ended up staying at a ‘friend’s’ house) …unless she came home at 3 am, pounding on the door, turning the lights on, and puking all over herself…. :\
I must confess, I went to BYU (aka the #1 stone-cold sober school in the nation) and, therefore, never had to deal with the alcoholic roommate. But she sounds like a rocking good time.
What about the extreme socially awkward type? There are worse roommates to have, but being shadowed by an overgrown semi-autistic puppy is no fun when you’re trying to branch out in the world. Even less fun when you think you’ve escaped to a better dorm for the next year, only to discover that Napoleon Dynamite saw your housing form and moved onto the same floor three doors down.