It’s getting to be that time of year when you start looking for housing for next school year if your lease is ending or you don’t like your current living situation. When doing so, this is your time to find new roommates if you aren’t bringing previous roommates with you. 

If this is the first time having roommates, you will soon learn that in order to have a peaceful alliance with each other you must learn to respect each other and the space you are sharing. 

I first lived in Argenta Hall, rest in peace, my freshman year. So, as an incoming freshman, I was considered a random roommate to two other girls. With me, I wanted to be best friends with them and be super close. I learned shortly after that it was a bit harder than we all expected. We were all different majors and had different lifestyles, so it was definitely  a learning curve. We had to learn how to share space and accommodate each other’s needs. 

When picking your roommates, sometimes living with your best friends work; sometimes it doesn’t. 

Whether it’s for dorms, apartments, or a house, picking your roommates could be the make or break of a relationship.

After freshman year, I thought that I had found a best friend within my college that I wanted to live with but instead, she decided to drop me in the summer before sophomore year after we already signed our lease, so I ended up getting assigned random roommates again. I had amazing roommates who were fun, respectful, understanding and inclusive. They were all friends prior to me and one of my other roommates. We lived in Wolf Run Village so there were five people per townhouse.

Find people who have the same habits

Sleeping habits, social habits, and cleaning habits are big go-to questions to ask when choosing people you know to be your roommates. Even if you are best friends with someone since you were in kindergarten, if they are big partiers and aren’t very clean compared to you, then they might not be the best roommates and you might want to avoid rooming with them if you want to keep the relationship the same. 

Are you up to significant others?

Also determine if they have a boyfriend or girlfriend, because if they do, expect their significant others to be over often or vice versa. Luckily, if you decide to live in student housing, there is usually a roommate matching system that does the job for you. But if you are looking for roommates in a house or apartment, these might be good questions to ask when interviewing potential roommates. 

I decided to move to The Highlands, my junior year, and also was assigned random roommates in our 4 bedroom apartment. So far everything is going well. We all have different lifestyles and most of us have boyfriends who decided to spend the night here and there. We are also different ages, but as long as we respect each other and each other’s spaces, we do well. Just by being respectful of each other and their space, we are good friends and we create great memories together.

But in my experience, I’ve made great friends the past couple of years, and they were all random roommates. So if you don’t know who you might be living with, don’t worry, roommate matching systems are great and asking these questions in interviews will help guide you to  a stress free year and hopefully create amazing memories.

Rachael Jones can be reached at rachaeljones@nevada.unr.edu and on Twitter @RachAJones99