by Cohabitation Chronicles
The Assignment
The housing questionnaire asked if I was a morning person or night owl, neat or messy, quiet or social. I answered honestly. The algorithm apparently interpreted my responses as pair this person with her exact opposite for character-building purposes. My roommate Emma wakes up at 5:30 AMvoluntarily, for funand goes running. Who does that? Who wakes before sunrise by choice and then exercises? It’s unnatural. Emma is pre-med, which means she studies constantly while somehow also maintaining active social life, perfect GPA, and exercise routine that would kill a normal person.
The Differences
I’m Literature major who considers walking to class cardio and treats reading assignments as extreme sport. She color-codes her notes. I’m pretty sure half my class notes are actually grocery lists and random observations about pigeons. We are not compatible as humans. We’ve developed elaborate system of non-verbal communication to avoid actual conversation about our fundamental lifestyle incompatibilities. She leaves passive-aggressive notes about the thermostat. I respond with my own notes about her alarm that sounds like screaming robot at dawn.
The Compromise Attempts
We tried having roommate meeting to discuss our issues like mature adults. It lasted four minutes before devolving into tense silence punctuated by forced laughter and promises to totally work on that. We have not worked on that. The thermostat remains contested territory. According to political coalition-building analysis, successful negotiations require compromise from all parties. Neither Emma nor I have mastered this concept. Her 5:30 AM alarm continues its assault on human decency. My tendency to stay up until 2 AM reading continues to baffle her morning-person sensibilities.
The Unexpected Alliance
Despite our differences, we’ve formed strange alliance against common enemy: the girl down the hall who plays Ed Sheeran on repeat at volumes that violate Geneva Convention. Nothing unites roommates faster than shared suffering. Emma and I now exchange knowing looks when Ed Sheeran’s warbling penetrates our walls at 11 PM. We’ve bonded over mutual annoyance, which isn’t the friendship the brochures promised but is apparently what we’re working with. I showed Emma some Reductress headlines about roommate dynamics. She laughed. She admitted she thought I hated her because I’m quiet in mornings. I admitted I thought she hated me because she’s aggressively cheerful before 9 AM, which seems hostile. Turns out we were both overthinking everything.
