My roommate said that when choosing to go random, he “prayed to God for a good roommate.” Does that make me a gift from God? Personally, I don’t think so. Admittedly, my roommate and I are not best friends. We seldom, if ever, spend time with each other outside of our dorm. It is not that we have any mutual ill will; rather, we are just not best friends. We have different interests and run in different circles, but more importantly, we have different sleep schedules (only half joking). As a result of opting to go random for our roommate assignment, neither of us came to school with any expectation of being best friends. We merely expect each other to be both respectful humans and roommates. 

Conversely, when opting to choose your roommate — which is sort of like flirting on Instagram with someone you’ve likely never met in person — you enter that relationship with a series of preconceived expectations often including friendship. In a perfect world, your first-year college roommate would likely become your best friend for life. But we don’t live in a utopia.

More often than not, in the quest for utopia, you end up landing in dystopia. In a less dramatic sense, in the quest for the perfect roommate, you’re more often than not going to find yourself disappointed. 

We should approach our roommate search randomly because doing so allows us to learn a lot more about ourselves and how to operate in the world than by attempting to handpick the perfect roommate.

With a chosen roommate, the lesson learned is clear: if I don’t like my chosen roommate, I probably should have chosen a better roommate. With a random roommate, the lessons you learn are more akin to life outside the relative bubble that is WashU.

I acknowledge that we as humans are flawed, selfish, and limited by nature. I acknowledge that going random wouldn’t yield perfection, but instead, imperfection. However, acknowledging imperfection in a roommate allowed me to tolerate the everyday annoyances that every roommate inevitably brings.

I’m neat (a bit militantly so). My roommate is messy. I go to bed and wake up relatively early. My roommate goes to bed at 3 a.m. and wakes up 20 minutes before his classes. Of course, it would be ideal if my roommate and I shared somewhat similar sleep schedules and if he were as neat as I was. All things considered, these differences have little effect on my life.

I didn’t ask for a perfect roommate. I asked for a roommate whom I can learn from. A 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America stated that we are more likely to have similar genes to close friends than to strangers. We are attracted to sameness. This extends to choosing a roommate through pseudo-flirting on Instagram. We search for sameness. We search for people who are the same as us. Who dresses similarly? Who looks similar? Who has similar interests? This is just the beginning of the countless amounts of things we look for when searching for the perfect roommate, but all are tied together by the theme of sameness.

There is nothing wrong with looking for sameness. It’s natural. But we don’t grow and learn about the world when we’re around similar people to us. Instead, we grow around those who are radically different.

Take my roommate and me, for example. I’m effectively agnostic. My roommate, on the other hand, is a devout Baptist who attends church every Sunday. This dichotomy makes for good conversation and often fruitful disagreement. Discussions about the existence of God? The necessity (or lack thereof) of Judeo-Christian belief in 2025? Does love have to be dictated by the guideposts of Christianity?

The learning also extends to a greater understanding of myself. Having a messy roommate (by non-college standards) confirms that living in a clean environment is what works for me. And having one who goes to bed at ungodly hours (pun intended) has only reinforced my commitment to a reasonable bedtime. 

Though not all of the lessons my roommate teaches me about myself are confirmation bias-based, there are many traits he possesses that I greatly admire. For example, as a pre-med student, he studies for hours on end in preparation for his exams, which is one of the reasons he goes to sleep at such ungodly hours. I have great admiration for his work ethic. Still, there is something greater we gain from embracing the choice to go random

In a world where we often find ourselves in echo chambers — whether that be online or even in our friend groups — one of the most valuable things we can do is converse with people who live profoundly different lives and believe in profoundly different things from ourselves. In doing so, we humanize those often painted as “the enemy.” 

To be clear, my roommate is not my adversary. Far from it. He is a different person with different interests, and I’m lucky to have him in my life. I may disagree with some of his actions and beliefs, but I don’t let that tear us apart; instead, I take it as an opportunity to learn.

The case for a random roommate: an openness to the world and, subsequently, the learning that comes with it.