You too might be blessed by the roommate gods.

MATT WIEGLE/YH

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 long 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 another 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 is she wanted to. "It's all the same to me," Lucy said casually. 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 all-nighters. I often had to drag her out of bed to get her to class on time, and she had to remind me of appointments. Visitors were shocked at the way we borrowed from each other's closets. At first we both tried to be neat, but after a few days the truth came out that our rooms at home had always been disasters. The days of putting away clothes ended. In short, we got used to each other's living styles--and became friends. While other freshmen told roommate horror stories, Lucy and I worried about the fact that we could never get anything done because we always talked.

We became so addicted to each other's company that when freshman year was up, we volunteered to take the double in our sophomore-year suite. Even though we looked forward to living in separate bedrooms in the same apartment as upperclassmen, we joked that we wouldn't be able to handle it. We would actually have to get work done, and neither of us would ever get up on time for classes. And hey, it's no fun talking to yourself all night.

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