Weekly Whine: Bad Roommates (Part 1)

I've had a lot of bad roommates over the years. I've had a lot of good roommates too. I've had roommates that I adored and made my life so much better. But somehow I remember the bad ones better.

When I started college, the students were assigned freshman roommates based on our interests. That's how I ended up in a suite with five other "science" girls, even though most of the other girls on our floor were English or History majors. By "science," I mean that two of us were math majors (me and one other girl), three were chem/bio (i.e. premed), and the other I'm not sure about but she was definitely taking chemistry.

Despite our "similar interests," we didn't really get along. We were the only room on the entire floor that decided to all live in different dorms next year... and basically, never speak to each other again. Mostly, I thought the premed girls were batshit crazy.

I wish I could remember every detail of their craziness. I wish I had recorded it for posterity, but I didn't. But I do remember that the two that I actually shared a room with had really weird sleep schedules.

My sleep schedule then was what I'd consider typical for a college student. On weeknights, I'd hang out with friends till midnight or so, mess around on the internet for a half hour, then go to sleep. I'd then wake up 15 minutes prior to my first class the next morning. Weekends or nights of big assignments due, I'd sometimes be up much later.

One of the premeds I roomed with had the sleep schedule of my grandparents. She would go to sleep at like 9PM every night and wake up around 5AM. To study. Every day. On weekends, it was particularly weird because I'd generally be arriving home just as she'd be waking up for the day. She also spoke with zero inflection in her voice. It was sort of like living with Rain Man.

The other premed I roomed with did appear to have a life outside of being premed, but she was also very intense about studying. One thing she used to do that drove me nuts was she'd set her alarm to go off in the middle of the night so that she could study. Like at 3AM, her alarm would go off. And because she didn't really want to wake up at 3AM, she would snooze it a few times. At 3AM. I wanted to murder her.

The second roommate had a nasty temper and the rest of us were all terrified of her, but she only inflicted it on me a handful of times. One of those times was when there was a fire drill in the middle of the night and I failed to wake her up, and apparently just left her there to die. I thought she should have thanked me because the fire alarm in our dorm went off like 4-5 times per month and I wished I could have slept through it.

Anyway, even though I was taking premed classes, I was technically a math major. Near the end of the year, one of my premed roommates found out I was taking chemistry and orgo, and she was shocked that I was considering med school. "That's impossible!" she said. "You're too laid back to be premed!"

She probably meant it as an insult but I took it as a huge compliment.

Part 2 (someday): My batshit crazy med school roommates