I’m a senior, and I have done some type of random roommate assignment for all four years of my college career. And I’ll say the quiet part, the thing no one wants to say: I didn’t do it because I had a point to prove, or do it in some long-term investigative attempt to parse out the administrative assignment process. I did it because, for the better part of my four years here, I couldn’t find friends to room with. 

Freshman year, I had the excuse of simply not knowing anyone on campus well enough to propose spending ten months living five feet away from them. Sophomore year, I found one other roommate — mostly by accident — and we went random for our third. Junior year was as random as freshman year, with COVID-19 leaving in its wake several stalled friendships and an unshakeable degree of isolation. And now, as a senior who applied very late (like, in April late) for University housing in a panicked attempt to secure any housing at all (long story!), going the random route was a foregone conclusion.

All of that is to say that I am uniquely qualified to tell you the following: it is not the end of the world.

I know well the anxiety that’s starting to settle over you, especially you who are freshmen. The roommate search often devolves into a hellish matchmaking process — if matches were only made in whispers and frantic texts. Is her group already full? He said I could room with them last month, but I haven’t heard anything; am I still in the group? It’s all the frenzy of a first date and all the drama of high school, only made more fraught by the looming grouping period deadline.

You’re starting to look around at the people whose names you still remember from orientation and wondering when they’ll turn into your own personal cast of Friends. You want compatible roommates, sure — someone who won’t keep the thermostat at 60 degrees or steal your clothes — but you also want the sitcom, the perfect, unruly cast of best friends who make every day a romp: the worn, burnt-orange couch and all. 

If you find that, more power to you. But I firmly believe that fewer people find it than you’d think. 

For every suite that contains a raucous, perfect-storm New Girl dynamic, there are two more who have, like, two conversations before room selection and make it work. For every friend who has curated their suite’s dynamic in fine detail, there are two more who meet the weekend before classes and quietly eke out a living situation that does the job for everyone involved.

In fact, some schools such as Duke and New York University have implemented policies that eliminate roommate requests for incoming students altogether. Their thinking is that by doing so, they force new students to meet types of people they otherwise might never meet, thus bridging gaps and encouraging inclusivity. And while I’m skeptical that random roommate assignment alone will do all of that work, and conscious of logistical issues with forcing students into such a commitment, I am inclined, somewhat, to agree with them. 

Going random last year meant that I roomed with a transfer student whose incredibly delicious food is the sole reason I now keep oyster sauce in my cabinet. A roommate who I met the Saturday before classes has, over the course of one semester, met and cooked with my mom and received internship prospects from my dad. I’ve roomed with an athlete, an ice skater, two people who were multilingual, one person who loved to bake.

There is something uniquely lovely about the slow process of getting to know someone from scratch — of knowing that someone who is effectively a stranger to you likes to listen to Japanese city pop in the shower or tends to scramble eggs after 12 p.m.

Curating your housing group is one measure of feeling more secure against a process that necessarily robs you of control at every turn. The inclination to do so is understandable, and if it works for you, it works for you. But if that perfect suite just isn’t coming together, please: try not to worry too much about it. Because really, we’re all going random. Even your best friends may end up being awful roommates; even your roommate of two years may start switching up in year three. 

While you can’t control how a semester will pan out, you can become a person who can broker a workable solution, regardless of the situation. Incompatibility can teach you how to adapt. How good are you at communicating your boundaries? How considerate are you of shared spaces? I know those living agreements are kind of laughable, but the questions they pose are ones that should be on your mind as you move throughout a shared space.

Whatever you do, good luck out there. It’ll be over before you know it.