A Reality continued: I kinda have a terrible roommate.
So my room this year is all the way up on the fourth floor of my dorm. I don't really mind the stairs, but I've definitely started taking the elevator more as the year goes on. I signed up for a double room without finding a roommate so I was expecting to be assigned a random freshman over the summer. And I knew a lot of freshmen probably don't want to be with a sophomore their first year, but honestly they could do worse than me. If they were taking any science or math classes at all, I could probably help them quite a bit with any of their questions. Heck, I'm even pretty good at editing English papers. That's kinda off topic though. I got one guy assigned to me over the summer, but I couldn't figure out which person with that name he was on facebook, and he never contacted me. Next thing I know, I get a little confirmation of my room for the fall from Housing and it says "No roommate assigned." So I don't know if that kid went to another college or decided to live off campus, or what happened. Hope everything worked out for him, because things certainly worked out nice for me. I spent the first two months or so of the year living by myself in a single room. It was wonderful. Lots of extra room, no worrying about another person's sleep schedule, yeah. Just nice. There was one kid who lived in another dorm and hated it who wanted to transfer into my room (his best friend from high school was right down the hall) but they wouldn't let him because I didn't have a roommate. Which I thought was weird. It's not like the empty space would disappear, it'd just be in another dorm. Whatever, no skin off my nose. The only bad thing about my floor was that I didn't/don't really talk to anyone from it. In fact, I've probably talked to about 3 kids once or twice. A large reason for this is that most of them are freshmen. The freshmen actually move in several days before returning students so they all meet and bond and such before the rest of us have even set foot on the floor. Which is fine. Most of the people are kinda partier types anyway. I enjoy drinking occasionally, but I'm not going to go to an overly crowded house where I know nobody, its too loud to get to know anybody, and which has a good chance of being busted by the cops. Not my idea of a good time. My floor is usually pretty calm, thought, and they are WWWWAAAAAYYYYYY cleaner than my floor last year (aka flushing toilets ect) so I don't really have any complaints with them.
So I enjoyed the months free from a roommate, but I kept waiting for a roommate to randomly be in the room when I walked in sometime. What eventually happened was his bags appeared in the empty closet. And then sat there for a week with no sign of him. When he finally did show up, something he said made me think that he'd had keys for more like two weeks and just didn't move in. He also had really bad English. He's Chinese, so lets call him Fob (Vee (who is also Asian) uses that for Fresh Off the Border people). The awkwardness started with the arrangements of the beds. Basically I couldn't get into mine while he was at his desk. I'm not sure if this is why he moved his computer to a little arrangement by his bed, or if he just thought it was more comfortable. Anyway, so it took us a while to really get used to each other. I completely gave up on small talk when I asked him how his weekend was, and he replied "Oh...um...that's private." So I'm pretty sure his English was bad enough that he didn't quite know what I was asking. So basically we had no communication. Which is fine, because, again, I look more for a roommate I can coexist with rather than be best friends with. But then there was/is his sleep schedule. It was really bad at first. He has this online multiplayer game he likes to play, which is fine. Except I like to go to bed around midnight or earlier, and he would still be up and I'd hear clickclickclickclickclickclick. I don't know what that game involved but sometimes he'd click his mouse nonstop for minutes at a time. I'm much more sensitive to sound than light when I'm trying to sleep, so I basically couldn't sleep while he was doing this. To make matters worse, he'd be audio chatting friends over the game while doing this, so he'd be silent for minutes on end, where I'd start drifting off, and then start shouting into his microphone, jarring me back awake. He'd do this into the wee hours of the morning. Then, he'd sleep until sometimes three or four in the afternoon, forcing me to basically go somewhere else to spend a lot of my days. I don't think he was going to class. It got really old really fast. The problem is, I inconvenience myself to be a good roommate, so rather than confronting him about it, I just let it go. Thankfully second semester was better. He kept better hours and didn't shout into his computer nearly as much (he still does occasionally, and it gets ridiculously loud. Like, I'll have headphones on and he'll drown out whatever I'm listening to). He's also been going to class more. I kinda wonder if he didn't do so well first semester and had to get his act together a little. After all, studying foreign exchange isn't cheap. He still occasionally will have a late night, but not too often. Unfortunately, those late nights often seem to fall on the night before a test for me. Plus he disappears for the weekend a lot, so that's nice too. (I'm not sure if he goes to parties or if he has a girlfriend. Again, no small talk.) Though when he comes back, he sleeps all day again.
So really, he hasn't been nearly as bad this semester, and like Ed, Fob wasn't being malicious, just oblivious. One time he was playing his computer game late at night without his headphones (I think he lost them over Christmas break, so there was a couple weeks of second semester where this was a problem.) and I finally asked him if he could turn it down. He immediately turned it off and apologized. I think, he honestly doesn't think of that sort of thing. He doesn't realize his noise might be keeping me awake, but he is genuinely sorry when he does realize it. So he's been kind of a burden to live with, but not horrible and the year is almost over. I can make it one more week. So I guess this isn't something that makes me say fuck reality. It's more of a thing that makes me say, I'm glad that's over, and I even if me and Fob weren't friends (he really only talked to other Chinese students. Some of them are like that.) I still wish him the best. I'm still looking forward to living in a single room next year though :p
No comments:
Post a Comment