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For the five semesters I’ve lived on campus, I’ve had as many roommates. I’ve also lived in four different dorms.

Freshman year I lived in the Pit of one of the low rises. Basically the Pit is the basement, which meant two things. 1) My building was built into the side of a hill. Half of my room was sunk into the ground and my window was practically even with the grass outside. I was always disturbed by people passing my room. On weekends I was also woken up by drunken girls and boys returning from parties. 2) The rooms were only located on one half of the hallway, the half less sunk into the hill. There were also half as many college kids on my floor compared to the other three, so I was friends with nearly every one of them.

First semester I lived with an overweight white girl from upstate New York named “Gloria”. She and I got along very well. We had the same taste in music, movies, friends and, best of all, boys. We would talk about everything, every day. She even acted as my mother in a few senses. But that winter break she called to tell me she wasn’t going back for the second semester. I was crushed. Who would I get as my second roommate?

The move-in day for returning students came and I waited for my new roommate. The next day she arrived. Diane was a tall, skinny black girl from Brooklyn. Now, I’m not a racist and I have nothing against black people. I was raised in a central New York high school with only two black people in my graduating class. I was just not used to black people. She turned out to not be a bad roommate. She hardly ever left the room and listened to a different kind of music than I did, but we still got along.

The summer of 2004 came and went, and that fall I moved the third floor of a low rise across the street from my first dorm. My roommate was assigned, and Alicia was her name. She was tall, skinny, and blonde. We got along the first few weeks of school, but by October I was fed up with the dorm.

A few things were different about my third semester than my first two. I was on the third floor, which meant I had to climb three flights of stairs at least four times a day. My window was also high up off the ground, though the noises of the geese in the pond across the road could still be heard at the early morning hours. The dorm life was also different. At all hours of the day there was loud (and in my opinion, crappy) music being blasted down the hall. People were running up and down the hallway, screaming and being drunk at four in the morning. This made studying extremely hard.

I also was beginning to not get along with my roommate. She would ignore me and have a lot of people in the room when I was trying to study. I was unhappy with practically every aspect of my life and becoming extremely depressed. A lot of things went into my decision to move to a different dorm. Finally I met with my Residence Hall Director (RHD) and we discussed possible plans. I eventually moved into a suite in a high rise across the street, next to my first dorm.

A suite is a lot different than a double. There are six girls and four rooms. Two rooms are doubles (two girls living together) and two are singles (a girl living alone). There is a small common room that connects all the rooms and a private bathroom. The suite was on the sixth floor, and the common room window overlooked a cemetery. I was put into a room with Cassandra, a short, spunky, slightly pudgy girl who liked to talk. A few weeks in, we stopped talking. I’m not sure how it happened, but it did. I, once again, became depressed and sad. I felt uncomfortable anywhere I was. At the end of the semester, at one in the morning, we sat down and talked about what had happened. We came to an agreement to talk more and become better friends and the last two weeks of my sophomore year were wonderful.

This semester I am up the hill, in one of the oldest dorms on campus. It has three wings and three floors. Two of the wings are female and one is male, and each wing has its own bathroom. While it’s not the same as sharing with just five other girls, it’s nice not to have to share with thirty. My room is a lot different than my previous ones, which were just boxes. This one has angles and a neat structure to them. The dorm is also located close to the major buildings where classes are held. Living up the hill has its disadvantages, though. All of the dining halls are down the hill, which means I have to trudge up and down it to eat.

My roommate’s name is Raquel. She’s a tall but sort of chubby girl who likes to talk but is willing to listen, too. Plus she’s really easy to talk to. She and I also have the same taste in music, which is hard to find on campus.

I’ve lived in different buildings and different parts of campus. Up the hill, down the hill, in high rises and low rises, in a double and in a suite, and things are different everywhere I go. I’ve also had an assortment of roommates, but they’ve all been good to me and I have tried to be good to them. I’m glad each semester has been different, because I might not have grown to be the person I am right now.