It's no that they're intrinsically horrible people

Roommate: noun. A person with whom one shares a room or apartment. Notice how the definition says nothing about being friends or getting along, or even speaking to each other at all during the second half of the year. Judging from my Yale experience, the definition should include a person who has the ability to make the first year of school completely unbearable.

Freshman year, I lived in the smallest room on Old Campus with three people who had one thing in common: their mutual dislike for me and for each other. It wasn't three against one, or two against one, but every woman for herself. Of course, there were degrees of dislike and each of us took turns being on the bottom of the list. We never exchanged dirty glances or said outright that we hated each other, but instead used the silent treatment. In our silence there was the understood agreement that we were all just going to try to grin and bear it to the end.

In our 12-foot-wide common room, individual boundaries were staked. On my wall hung a huge Budweiser banner, stolen from a frat party. On the other wall hung a poster of The Cure, on another, postcards of Ohio, and on the fourth, a drawing of a teddy bear dancing. By the end of the first week of school, we had each asserted our personalities and our common room looked like a battle ground, with Jon Belushi, Robert Smith, Mozart, and Florence Nightingale facing off for war. Sound like a nightmare? It was.

I wish I could say that our relationship steadily deteriorated over time, but there were problems from the start. One of the first major fights happened just three weeks after school started. A male friend of mine from high school wanted to visit me at Yale before he left for college, so of course I told him yes, figuring nobody in my room would have a problem with someone camping out in our suite. I asked my roommates if he could sleep on the couch in the common room for a night, and instead of getting the expected "sure," I heard: "no opinion," "I think we should talk about this," and "no." The long and short of it? My friend came to visit and had to get a hotel room because they wouldn't let him sleep in the suite.

No one ever wanted to share anything, so our common room contained four of everything; bookshelves, chairs and stereos. Whenever my roommate had a lot of work she would pull all-nighters in the room and set her alarm every 15 minutes in case she fell asleep. In other words, when she was up all night, I was too.

Like most frosh, I came to Yale expecting to laugh and bond with my new roommates. I was excited about meeting the people with whom I would share the new experiences of my first year at Yale. I thought we'd stay up late at night procrastinating, go to parties or movies together. I definitely expected to celebrate everyone's birthdays and go out to dinner every once in a while. I never dreamed of total silence and of walking in and out of my room for two months without muttering a word.

Perhaps my initial hopes were a bit too high, because by the end of the year, one suitemate wrote a two-page typed letter to the rest of us carefully and specifically outlining why she hated each person. All I could think was that at least she had taken the time to write something down for me.

My other roommates bickered over taking "couch duty" and in the meantime, I slept on my best friend's couch in Vanderbilt. It got to the point where we each arranged our work schedule to minimize the amount of contact time we had with one another in the room.

Watching other frosh bond and love their roommates definitely made our rooming situation a sore spot for all four of us. Deep inside, we all wanted it to work, and there were definitely moments when we did get along. Unfortunately, our personalities were completely at odds, so the rough times outweighed the good. Living in close quarters can be great for people who share things in common, but when you don't get along with your roommates, even the space on your bed doesn't seem safe.

I thought more than once about moving out, but then I figured this was part of the Yale experience--meeting diverse people and learning to live with them. As time wore on, I adjusted to the situation, and after a while it didn't bother me as much.

The upshot of the bad rooming situation was that I met a lot of people outside my college. Without ready-made friends in my room, I was motivated to get out and find a group of friends. I also got involved in a lot of activities that made me happy and occupied my time.

I was forced to look at my rooming situation in a Nietszchian perspective: that which does not kill you will make you stronger. In the end, a positive side to my rooming situation turned up after all; now, whenever people gather to exchange roommate horror stories, I know I always have the best ones.

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