Kenzie Travers, Florence Italy
In my travels, I have experienced a lot of interesting roommate encounters.
At a London hostel, I roomed with four Spanish-speaking girls from Madrid.
They left the lights on after I had gone to bed and snickered all night. I understood them when they mocked my cough, too. In a hostel in Barcelona, I roomed with a guy from Portugal who sat on his bed in nothing but his underwear, chatting with me casually.
Contributed Photo / Kenzie Travers
Keene State College sophomore Kenzie Travers (second from right) is studying in Florence, Italy for the spring semester. Kenzie visited London on one of her excursions.
But none compares with someone whom you are friends with. When friends become roommates, or roommates become friends, you step into another level of that relationship. When friends become roommates, you must share everything together, whether you mean to or not.
You hear their conversation with their mom on the phone, you see them naked, you see them at their worst or their best. You have to start compromising about who eats what food, which person makes dinner when and whose turn it is to buy the toilet paper.
You have to make sure that you clean up after yourself, because you are sharing this space with someone else. And sometimes you might feel too comfortable, because it is a friend.
Whether it be with my roommate in Keene, or my roommate here in Italy, we always are there for each other, even if we’re annoyed that one of us hasn’t taken out the trash for three days.
In order to achieve the best balance of a friendship and roommate relationship, you have to communicate with each other.
Many of us don’t know how to do this anymore and hide behind texts or Facebook messages to deliver our feelings.
However, It is not very easy to avoid confronting this person, seeing as you live with them. You really have to let down your guard and be honest, which is where being a roommate with a friend truly challenges you.
Not everyone is going to agree on one thing, and you have to consider the other person.
The best thing to do in these types of situations is be understanding; you are friends after all! It is important not to sweat the small stuff.
Everyone has her own idea of “clean.”
No matter how close you are with someone, there will be challenges actually living together, because there come responsibilities. Washing dishes is a big responsibility. It is always annoying to have no clean spoons for your cereal in the morning or to walk into the kitchen and there sits a pile of dirty dishes waiting in the sink.
Upon first moving in, you may have not discussed this with your roommates, so one person may be doing all the dishes all the time or no one is doing them at all.
When this happened in our apartment, we had to talk about doing our dishes as soon as we finished using them, so that there would be no silent frustration or grudges against each other.
When you live with your friends, you have to remember why you thought it was such a great idea to live together in the first place.
These new challenges can help you grow as friends and learn how to deal with certain life lessons.
