You too might be blessed by the roommate gods

When I received the packet with my rooming information, I discovered that I would be living in the only double in a six-person suite. What kind of bad luck was it to end up in the only double? I had never shared a room for a prolonged period of time, and I had always had my own bathroom at home, so the idea of squeezing into a tiny cubicle with a bunk-bed and a whole other person and her stuff scared me.

Things started looking up when I got a letter from Lucy, my future roommate, and then talked to her on the phone. When I got to school, I had one pleasant surprise and one disaster waiting for me: on the positive side, the room was far from the miniscule hole I had imagined; but my parents had already arrived and claimed one side of the room--a serious first-impression faux pas--while I was on FOOT. Lucy arrived, and I quickly explained that we could still switch. "Oh whatever," Lucy said casually. "It's all the same to me." I was in roommate heaven.

As it turned out, the roommate gods had blessed us. Lucy and I went through every step of roommate life without conflict: we coordinated everything together, from room decoration, to late-night eating habits, to all-nighters. I often had to drag her out of bed to get her to class on time, while she had to remind me of appointments and meetings. Visitors were shocked at the way we borrowed from each other's closets. At first we both tried hard to be neat, but after a few days it came out that our rooms at home had always been disaster areas--and the days of putting away clothes and books ended. In short, we got used to each other's living styles--and we became friends. While others told roommate horror stories, Lucy and I worried that we could never get anything done because we always wanted to talk.

We became so addicted to each other's company that we went so far as to volunteer to take the double in our sophomore-year suite instead of rotating into the single. As the two of us look forward to living in separate bedrooms in the same apartment this coming year, we joke that we won't be able to handle it. Lucy and I will actually have to get work done when we're at our desks, our wardrobes will be cut in half, and neither of us will ever get up on time for classes. And hey, it's no fun talking to yourself all night.

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