Going to the college and living in a dorm room may be one of the most exciting periods of your life. It can also turn out to be scariest. You have left your parents and will be living in a dorm room with strangers who don’t know your stories, your habits and anything about you. You are probably going to spend most of the time with your roommate. Thus, you should maintain a good relationship with your roommate as it is very important to lead an enjoyable and a helpful college life.
- As mentioned earlier, you are going to spend much of your time with your roommates and he or she will be your first friend at college. So get to know each other, about families, personal interests, academic interests, school, fun activities and much more.
- Communication is the key to build a strong and successful relationship with your roommate. Living together can cause much indifference and will make life stressful. Thus, discuss some issues with each other and try and make your room a better place to live in.
- Set some boundaries and limitations for each other and stick to them. These limitations imply to clothes, food, personal possessions, cleanliness issues and others as per your requirements.
- You must respect the privacy and personal space of each other as you are living in a small space. Always ask each other before borrowing things so as to avoid misunderstandings. Make sure to take good care of the borrowed items.
- Be neat and maintain cleanliness in the room. Make sure that you make the living environment in your room conducive and comfortable as it is not your personal room and your roommates may not like the room in shabby or messy state.
- Be careful of the people whom you allow in your room. You may like studying in a community manner but your roommate may demand silence and privacy. Thus, if you like studying with your friends and your roommates studies best in quiet atmosphere, then you can alternate about who’s sharing the room and who’s moving into library.
- Be friendly with your roommate but avoid going into your roommate relationship thinking that you both would be great friends. It is possible, but don’t expect much as it may land both of you in trouble. Thus, be friendly with your roommate, but also make sure to have your own friend circle.
- Is there nothing that you and your roommate have in common? Find an activity that you both can share. Maybe you both can be workout partners, enjoy a particular movie, music, hobby etc. This will build a good rapport between you.
- Accept cultural difference. You and your roommate may belong to different religion and lifestyle. Thus, there is a possibility of attitude clashes. So, make sure you are open to new ideas and experiences and see it as a learning opportunity.
- Be ready to compromise. As mentioned earlier there will be ego clashes. You cannot ask your roommate to change if you are not willing to.
Thus, don’t lay too rigid guidelines. Life is short, so sometimes you should decide that you just don’t care and move forward.
