When you meet someone new and spend time with them, you are only really interacting with one side of that person. After living with my roommates for these past two months at Rowan, I learned that when you live with someone, you get a front-row seat to see every side and aspect of that individual.

When I first met my roommate and my suitemates, to put it mildly, I did not like them. I found them to be the exact opposite type of people I would choose to interact with. Their interests confused me; the way they talked was strange, and even their interactions with me were a little weird at first. I found their humor to be rude and the way they treated people to be outrageous. 

I made the mistake of judging them upon first meeting them, but the truth is, I could not have been more wrong. 

Having never lived with people outside of my family before, it was a difficult adjustment, and living with my roommate and suitemate was an even harder obstacle. Little to no boundaries, differing levels of what we deemed “clean,” and music blasting at full volume in our shared bathroom at three in the morning did not get us off on the right foot. Adding the fact that in the course of two months, I’ve been locked out of my own bathroom thirty-eight times.

In my defense, it’s easy to see why I would have had little regard for them.

At first, I tried to stay away from my roommate and suitemates, and for a while, this was the norm. We interacted very little and would occasionally say hello to one another. It didn’t happen overnight, but I slowly started to see them less as what I saw at face value and rather started viewing them as authentic people. 

Small talk turned into conversations, and conversations turned into heartfelt moments. I stopped trying to avoid them simply because I had little in common with them and would try to engage with them more often.

I learned my one suitemate, who was very standoffish and put on a very serious persona around people he didn’t know, was actually quite vulnerable and is one of the funniest people I know. My other suitemate loves to come over and play the Wii with my roommate, and we talk about our days and what we’re up to whenever we see each other. My roommate and I went from not talking at all to each other to binge-watching all the Evil Dead movies last week and watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia almost every night. 

They all went from people I couldn’t stand to be around, to becoming people I confide in and talk about personal issues with. 

College taught me that the people you encounter every day are impossible to judge. Even the people you interact with around campus every day, you really don’t know them, so why judge them?

People aren’t all bad, and they aren’t all good. When you live with someone, you see all their sides: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Humans are complex, a messy balls of issues, and at the end of the day, so are you. We’re all in the same boat here at Rowan, just trying to figure our lives out and find ourselves. Ultimately, I’m glad I gave my roommate and suitemates a chance because they are probably the closest thing I have to a family here at Rowan. 

And if they are reading this, I hope they know I’m glad they’re in my life. Just please unlock the bathroom.

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