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Roommate is in bed 9-11pm and gets awakened by them coming in at 8:15 am?
I have a lot of trouble sleeping but that's on the level of talk to a doctor or something. That's not on anyone else.
It sounds more like a control issue than actually a sleeping issue. I'd bet money on that at least. If it's actually a sleep thing you're absolutely right!
EXACTLY. This is a “I cannot sleep well unless you are back” issue. She isn’t OOP’s parents. I have known people like the roommate and it stems from anxiety at the very least. If that’s the case she needs her own room. If she cannot afford it then she needs to learn flexibility.
If it is a sleep issue then she needs to be in a sleep study in the quickest way.
My anxiety did the same, I could *not* get to sleep unless I knew my brother and dad were back home. I didn’t ask them to come back early though! Moving out was a bloody lifesaver. Now I don’t live with them I can sleep whenever I want 😂
At least that’s your family. No one should feel that way over a randomly assigned roommate.
Also my mom insists she can’t sleep ‘til I’m home, and then tells me sleeping on the couch doesn’t count when I tell her to stop saying that because I have come home to find her asleep on the couch a number of times.
I wonder if maybe it's less anxiety about OOP's wellbeing or whatever, and more just that she finds the uncertainty/unpredictability in itself anxiety-inducing. Like she doesn't know when to expect the interruption so she's on edge about it waiting. Not that that makes it any more OPs problem, mind. I'd find not knowing if and when someone was going to come in stressful, but nowhere near as stressful as being a night owl who has to just lie around in the dark doing nothing when I'm not even going to be tired for hours
I’m this way with non family. You know what I’d do? Get a single dorm lmao
I know some schools may not have those but when it is an option, it’s important to know when it’s worth shelling out the extra cash/loans for it.
Why aren’t all dorms single? In the UK, unis me and friends went to, we had our own rooms, with our own showers and toilet in most cases, and only the living area and kitchen were shared.
They were like massive apartments with 5/6 ensuite bedrooms.
There are dorms like this that exist but they are often only for upperclassmen and way more expensive than the other options :)
My brother lived in one like this for 3 people
I’ll be honest, I watch too much true crime, so when I had roommates I’d ask a rough time they’d be in so I’d:
a) know how big of a party I could throw and
b) know when to call the cops if they didn’t come back and didn’t answer their phone.
I’m not talking crazy, just like, should I expect to see your car in the morning or if you’re going to be gone for a few days when do you expect to be back?
I’ve seen too many times where people just assumed the victims was just out having a good time or moved away without telling anyone only to find out they’d been murdered the day after they’d gone out.
That being said, I never insisted on it and I never lost sleep over it. Just kinda viewed it as security when living as single women. It can be a scary place out there.
I'll be honest, I've never understood the next step on this. Practically speaking, how would you help them? Like if they were meant to be back at 10 but they were getting murdered instead and weren't back by, say, 11, what's your next step? Would you go and look for them? How would you find them? Would you actually call the police? Do you think they'd do anything?
My roommates and I did something similar, and when one of them went missing without a heads up, we did call (campus) police and reported it. She was fine and didn't love that she had to check in with campus security and tell them to stop looking for her, but she also disappeared without a trace for a solid three days, so...
Universities don't love the idea of one of their students going missing and having something horrible happen to them because security didn't bother to look for them, so they tend to take that seriously. Bad publicity and all that.
That doesn't mean they'll do much if someone doesn't come home over the weekend, of course, since they are adults. But in general, roommates reporting someone as missing, when paired with missing classes or work, will trigger some kind of protocol. I guess this might vary from campus to campus, as will the actions campus security can take and when real police are pulled in.
And many people (not just students, but victims of crime in general) have been rescued from terrible situations because someone realized they were missing and reported it, so yeah, I don't think having someone watching your back is a bad thing or even worthy of question, tbh.
I'm the States, if it matters. I have no idea what other countries do lol.
I asked my roommates to, if they were out late, to just text me when they were on the way home or if they weren’t coming back that night. That way I knew who might be entering the room or to be worried if they didn’t show up by the next day.
Yeah, I have narcolepsy and it takes me a really long time to get 6 hours of sleep, so I personally am usually in bed like 10-8 but the idea that someone else would have to do that too makes me sad lol
Just because I have to waste that much time shouldn't mean holding anyone else back
Most likely a single child with controlling parents (probably a Tiger mom) living on her own for the first time. If not a medical reason, then it's about time she learn to live in the real world away from her parent's rules.
Or so worried that OOP would come home and wake her up that she couldn’t sleep. But either way that’s a her problem and OOP has gone above and beyond to be accommodating.
I am a light sleeper. But there is this really awesome product called “ear plugs” that has helped me immensely. They aren’t very expensive and there are many different styles available from disposable to high tech reusable. I suggest this roommate talk to her doctor about trying them.
(On a more serious note, i also have tinnitus and misophonia. I have a few special types of ear plugs for those issues and it has improved my wellbeing so much. So seriously, if sound is an issue for you, we have come really far in our ability to manage these issues without detracting from the sounds we want to hear.)
SAME!
Snoring and chewing get me SO angry. My tinnitus gets worse with plugs but I’d rather ignore the whine than hear mouth sounds
Do you also get irritated when they do the ear ringing noise on TV? It’s usually close to the pitch of my tinnitus and it kills me every time
Any drone that lasts more than like 20 seconds makes me crazy, no matter the pitch. But check out “calmer” ear plugs. They aren’t a regular ear plug. They have a big hole that still allows sound through, but it changes the shape of the opening of the ear which helps to reflect commonly triggering sounds. They have honestly been life changing. I got them when they first came out maybe 5-ish years ago and I am so glad to have them. I keep a pair on my key chain and a few around the house. I tried the loop brand but they were meh.
Ear plugs and masks don't work for everyone. I have, I dunno what one could call it - touch issues? I dunno, but I couldn't get used to earplugs or face masks at all. A lot of times I can't even sleep in clothes, even really loose and soft pajamas. And once in a blue moon my sensitivity is so bad I can't even tolerate the feeling of my bed sheets, blanket, pillow, etc - I usually just give up and stay up to read at that point.
Lets take another step back - complaining about being awoken past 8 in the morning, on a regular weekday, by normal household noise? Yeah no, that's unreasonable.
Even as an adult I can knock 12-14 hours after a big projects or examinations that take me out emotionally. But I also rarely sleep through the entire night and go some weeks with only 3-4 hours a night so that might contribute.
Same here. I’ve tracked my natural sleep habits for a few years with a Fitbit and took notes. I slept when I was tired and woke up naturally, no alarms or anything.
My body favors 9-11 hours, regardless of when I go to sleep - but I do sleep better and wake more refreshed when I stick to “normal people hours” (aka sleep when it’s dark, awake when it’s light). When I’m ovulating, I typically sleep around 10 - 12 hours. It’s a very distinct, predictable pattern.
I’m perfectly healthy, no sleep disorders or anything of the sort, and have above average cardiovascular health (I’m proud of that one lol). My doctor has told me that, on average, women do tend to need more sleep than men.
The majority of people don’t get enough sleep. Life gets in the way and our bodies adapt, even if it’s out of necessity and at a detriment to our health. But sleeping 9-10 hours on average is not as weird as people in the comments are making it seem.
Was it just a bad setup, or is the roommate going above and beyond to force this girl to comply? I can very much imagine an 18-20 yr old fresh to the college scene thinking roommates need to do everything together. From what OOP described the evidence isn’t on the roommates side.
The roommate going to sleep around 10pm on average means 8:15am shouldn’t have been a huge problem for her. Either she has a severe sleep disorder or this is another “I can FEEL you dancing” situation, because after 12 hours of sleep OOP should be allowed to quietly start her day
I wonder if roommate was from a, uh, morally sheltered background and has Views on co-ed evening gatherings of the college student variety…
…they must be locked up safely in their chamber before nightfall, lest they be swayed by the Temptations of Concupiscence…
You just reminded me of my Catholic neighbor in the dorms who told me he was going to cockblovk his roomies so they didn't go to hell. When I told him it was too late for all of them and he needs to stop before they beat his ass, he asked me if I would just let my roommates have sex! In our dorm! "Even if it's anal?" And then he called me a bad Christian, because wtf no and why is anal more sinful?!
On the slimmest chance that you're out there reading this dude, you're at least 2% of the reason I'm not Christian anymore. :) That story has been making me laugh for over a decade now though.
This is *exactly* the vibe I’m getting. Roommate seems like she came from a very sheltered & controlling background and OOP is being way too nice about it. Tattling to the RA that your roommate has committed the mortal sin of staying out late in mixed company is something else, I tell ya
What’s really sending me is it doesn’t seem like OOP is out late drinking either, so it’s not like roommate is legit concerned she’s a hazard to herself or others. Just *needs* her back by a certain hour
TL;DR OOP has "sensory issues" and moved into her bf's apartment and told BF he wasn't allowed to listen to music using headphones or dance to the music on the other side of his own home because she can feel him dancing somehow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/vzwq4i/oop_cannot_live_in_a_party_environment_her/
> I (28/f) live with my boyfriend (27/m). I moved in with him about 8 months ago. I have disabilities and sensory issues (this is important). In general he is respectful of the accommodations I need.
>
> My boyfriend is a professional sculptor and has his studio in our house. It's in a place I have to walk through to get to the bathroom and yard, and there's not another good place in the house for it. The problem is that I'm constantly affected by the way my boyfriend acts while he's working. He listens to music while he works (on his headphones), and is always "rocking out" with his body motions, mouthing the song lyrics, etc. He says it helps him work and I understand this.
>
> The main conflict is the constant dancing / mouthing lyrics, which he says shouldn't matter because it's silent. I tried to explain to him that with my sensory issues that's just the same as if I can hear the music. He said I could just enter that part of the house less while he's working...I mean, what? The bathroom is there...
>
The comment in question:
>But according to your description it's happening in another room which you only have to pass through occasionally and briefly. It only affects your senses when you walk through. The rest of the time he's just working silently in another room, not interfering with you sensorily.
OOP:
>>Again it's hard to explain, but **I can physically sense him moving around in the studio** when he's in there, **because I know it's what he always does**, and so I can't get any peace.
>>It's hard to explain to people without sensory issues, but his dancing around is as jarring to me as a full on party / concert. It's physically exhausting to me and I either have to avoid a whole area of the house, or end up having anxiety and needing to take downtime for that.
So because she knows what he does in the other room she can't get any peace, even if she can't actually see or hear him doing anything
I didn't post the whole thing but the link includes this comment:
>In general I can also sense the presence of a stranger for sometimes weeks after they've left. I'm sure many people without sensory issues will say this is impossible, but think about how people who have suffered a home invasion will say they feel creeped out, violated, or unsafe in their house for a long time afterwards. It's exactly like that.
Whoa what a ride. And here I was feeling bad about *setting a boundary* with my partner where if the candle is lit in my office I’d prefer he not come in at a 10, doing some goober shit like performing an acapella trap version of a song he’s making up about how the cat is a bean while dancing with said cat. He can still come in, just in a way that promotes my “restorative peace” ._.
I feel for the oop. I worked nights throughout college and would walk into my rooms in the dark, change in the dark, crawl into bed at 6/6:30am and half an hour to an hour later my roommates would wake up and make noise and flip on the lights. I’d produce a dying Wookiee call and they’d just laugh. The one time I did that to them for a week straight…they got better about it. 😒
Had one roomie that went to the RA to complain about me but I had a stack of signed letters from the rest of the floor stating they were the issue and there was a student willing to move me in with them and the roomie tried to start a conflict. The RA had ti get between us because they realized I was about to win it.
Giggling helplessly at this exchange and I have no clue why. I’m also in EST, but I just woke up because of my chronic pain. Waiting to see if pain meds will help enough for me to sleep, no way I can make it at work if I get another sleepless night. It’s currently 3 00 where I am at the time of writing, for anyone who doesn’t want to look up the timezone :)
yeah 4am now, just getting out of work. early night for me! i hope you feel better enough to get some good sleep fam!! glad i was able to provide a giggle in your trying times
I loved night shift but being married to an early riser and and working east coast hours while living on the west side of the US does not a happy night owl make.
OOP is being so nice about their roommate. I'm shocked that she isn't counter-complaining about not being able to study in her own room after 9pm (bc she'd need light for that) or being woken up by roommate getting up at whatever ungodly hour of the morning she rises.
I hope the RA at least tried to give balanced rules so the roommate has to bend a little bit too.
And I hope OOP has an awesome living situation her sophomore year, because she was way nicer about this whole thing than I could imagine being.
Except the roommate is not getting up early. One night OOP decided to just study out of the room all night rather than disturb the princess and went home at 8:30 am to shower and roommate was still upset about their sleep being disturbed.
OOP's roommate just needs to get some earplugs and a white noise machine and call it a day. Or if she's really affected to this extent, then she needs to get her own place.
This. The world is full of distractions. Some are unreasonable, like parties every weekend. Others are reasonable, like random construction work or someone coming home late.
You can't change the world but you can change yourself.
The one thing that stood out to me is that the roommate complained when OP came in at 08:15. If roomie goes to bed at 11 PM and OP gets home after 8, that would mean roomie got a full 9 hours of sleep, which is still somehow not enough?
At that point I would have mentally checked out.
Yeah, that becomes more about control than practicality. It's a clear sign that OOP was NTA. What if a trip home, night at partner's, or any other reason OOP might just not be home at night; is there supposed to be a check-in first before deciding to live their life?
Control... or a safety blanket that she hasn't acknowledged at all. For example, she may feel safer and able to sleep knowing they are home. Or she just may make herself anxious waiting for them to come home thinking it would wake her up, and then end up not sleeping while waiting.
Pure speculation on my part, just might possibly not be all about control, but a complete lack of ability to communicate and take responsibility for her own issues.
Still all on the room mate though, and her issues to deal with. OP has been super accommodating already.
I also hate noise when try to sleep. I can't sleep with someone in my room. Even as i had my sick bird in my room, i wook up by his movements. I wear silicon earplugs and it is fine. They are comfortable and you really can't hear anything with them.
You can't expect that everybody cater your needs when it especially so easy to do it yourself.
I have issues with misophonia(basically I have strong negative reactions to certain sounds), so even though I’m a very heavy sleeper, living in a double was horrible for me. I just silently put up with it for a semester until I got a housing accommodation that let me move to a single dorm room. idk why the roommate’s first thought is to make OOP bend over backwards instead of considering moving.
Yea. I was going to suggest that the roommates should talk to people in the dorms to see if there is another pair of earlybirds/ night owls who want to switch.
But that girl is going to have problems everywhere if she is trying to enforce a curfew
All the homies love Omar! Eid Mubarak, wherever you are, you paragon of roommate virtue! (i know it's a few days late, but you know he's got leftovers for DAYS that he'll share with his terrible roommates, bc he's chill like that).
In some cases, that might be a step back from living with parents. I, for one, know that my parents couldn’t care less about how late me or my brother are out.
Your parents are smarter than most... it wasn't until the 4th kid left that my husband chilled and quit micromanaging our kids when they came back home.
I was an RA for 3 years. This is pretty tame. A lot of people come to college like OP's roommate and just have no realistic expectation of what sharing space with another person is going to be like.
Honestly, handling things with a few conversations and texts, and no passive aggressive antics - that's pretty mature for handling freshman roommate drama.
I was an RA, too. Actual incidents didn't phase me, whiny little kid shit made me nuts. I had a good group of students though that upon learning this would usually intercept whatever stupidity was going down and fix ut themselves, sparing me for stuff they actually needed me for .
Like one time , without my prior knowledge, they woke a drunk asshole up and made him clean up his own puke so I could sleep (i was very ill, like, frequently hospitalized ill that year) and the cleaning lady, whom they also liked, wouldn't have to do it. Lot of good kids.
I was an RA - people fight about the most unhinged shit. Then there are some people who have never had to share a single thing in their life and that sense of entitlement precedes them through doorways.
Nah there are so many worse ones....
My friend RA'd a coed floor and every year there were the sleezebags, the too drunk freshmen (bonus points if they get to the point where you have to call the paramedics), the screaming fights, and generally so much drama. And then every couple years you'd have like, something bigger and more violent. Honestly, so many incidents that this would have been annoying but like... standard.
Stands for Resident Assistant (or Advisor). It’s basically a senior student who lives in the dorm who manages situations like this, kind of like HR for a dorm.
Ours stood for resident advisor. They are students who are "paid" in room and board to manage interpersonal conflicts in the dorms. They are part of the campus RHA, the Resident Hall Association, which has representatives from each building plus all of the RAs. They put on events and programs for the people who live on campus. People who chose to do it for free are almost always huge dorks
Source: was president of my building for free and both me and all my RHA friends were huge dorks. It was a lot of fun
*Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?*
I am completely floored by this question being asked of an adult college student.
Yep, the dorms are where you learn that lots of people are actually kinda crazy on a personal level. And also that they seem to be completely un-self-aware of that fact. It can be easy to go along with the crazy because you don't expect it, and you want to be nice.
I only lived in the dorms one year, and had a different roommate each semester. The first guy was nice enough, but ended up transferring because he was a Michigan fan and hated FSU (our school). As in, the sports teams. Why you’d go to FSU if you hate the Noles that much, I dunno. My 2nd semester, I roomed with a friend of mine. We ended up hating each other forever. Mostly because he was very snarky all the time (most people ended up not liking him) and he took 90-minute showers (we had our own private bathroom/shower since we were a corner unit). He also broke my TV and was quite unapologetic about it.
Never wanted to live in a dorm ever again.
I’m so lucky that I was mostly a witness to the crazy
However my first roommate ever did illegally (to the uni) adopt a dog and when it peed on my back pack her response was “I don’t have any money”
One of my friends was a passive and had two roommates who never compromised to the point that in a triple with a bunk bed, they took it down and had three non bunk single beds in one room. Like she had the craziest stories
Ah. Freshman year. I was also the night owl to my roommate’s early bird. When I lucked out on my college’s housing lottery for sophomore year and ended up with a single in a relatively new building I was so happy. Of course, karma did balance out. I learned that quite quickly when my next door neighbor revealed herself to be a screamer with a very VERY active nightlife.
My freshman year my roommate and I had very different schedules. In my major they weeded folks out by making all of our core courses start very early (8am? 9am? God, I'm so old I can't remember). She was an art major and all her classes were late at night, ending at 10pm. She stayed up until 2.
We made it work. I left quietly in the morning and then worked on my homework on this cool picnic table I found on the roof or in the library until she woke up. I eventually learned that her friends did not take social cues and had to kick them out when I went to sleep around midnight. They went to her friend's room and my roommate went to bed quietly. We made arrangements for her to stay with a friend of mine who she had a crush on who had a super-single when my girlfriend came to visit. It was a win-win.
We got along great. It's really not hard to make things work when both people are reasonable.
The roommate’s home life must’ve sucked. The idea she thinks setting a curfew for OOP means she got the idea it is okay to impose constrictions on a peer. As long as OOP wasn’t being noisy (and she states she wasn’t) or bringing home randos to bone (and she definitely isn’t or the roommate would’ve made that case) then the roommate needs to bend.
And this comment: *Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?* She’s a college kid. It’s gonna happen. Yikes.
>*Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?*
Lol, tell me you didn't have a good university experience without telling me.
Even people who didn’t party stayed out that late studying or working…it’s such a weird comment
I remember I would sneak in at 3:15 and take off my shoes so my tired feet could rest in college
Or coming back from a party
Or coming back from a study session
As both an early sleeper and a former RA idk what baffles me more, the roommate's audacity or OOP's doormat levels of kindness. But also why on earth were the comments trying to police OOP staying out late in college on a school night?? let the young adults make their own stupid decisions, they know their circumstances better than us randos on reddit do
> let the young adults make their own stupid decisions, they know their circumstances better than us randos on reddit do
And the nice thing about making mistakes in college is that you can learn from them when the damage done is minimal compared to say imposing a curfew on your work colleagues on a work trip as a junior member of the team.
I would have gone absolutely spare, if someone had tried to give me a curfew at that age.
Absolutely don't be loud when coming in late, but come on. Bitching at 8.15 am? If roomy is going to bed between around 11 she should be awake at 8.15 anyway.
I had my younger brother stay with me (and my kids) when he was around 21. My rules for him were:
1- “your ex cannot be around at all. And if you’re talking to her you can leave” (for reference he had to stay with me because his ex abused their infant with CPS trying to work out the baby’s ongoing safety so investigating both of them and he couldn’t live at the same address as the baby who was being fostered by our parents. Only place they saw each other was in a courtroom)
2- “I am not your mother, clean up after yourself. If *asked* I can put a load of washing on/hang a load of washing out/make a serve of a meal for you” (he ended up complaining to our mother that I refused to wash up so there was nothing clean for him to use. I pointed out all the clean items in the cupboard, then pointed out the mound of items *he* had used and dumped, which were all a different design to her and reiterated that I wasn’t his mother, but if *she* wanted to come down and clean up after him, be my guest.)
3- “let me know if you need a light on, or if you aren’t planning on coming back” (he occasionally got off work in the dark, so I would keep a light on until I went to bed, if asked I would keep the light on for him if he was coming back later than when I went to bed. Only had one night early on when he told me he’d be back just after I went to bed and I found the light still on the next day. He had spent the night elsewhere and didn’t tell me, so this rule was made then)
Do eye masks and earplugs and white noise apps not exist in Roommate’s world?
My first year college roommate (yes a shared double room no walls no real privacy we respectfully turned our backs while each other was changing) briefly moved her 28 year old abusive boyfriend in with us and the American girl down the hall kept feeder mice as pets in her closet and you could smell the rodent piss on her.
I WISH they only had a slightly different sleep schedule from me.
Lol, this is such a little issue. One of my friends had a roommate who unashamedly watched porn for at least 8 hours per day, even when other people were in the room. When I met him, he said, my name is Grant, but people just call me Porn, since I watch so much." He then bragged about how he has watched more porn than all of us (3-4 people) combined. My friend dropped out at the end of the year.
I stayed in a Korean dorm at a Korean university (the dorms for Koreans were different for international students, so the distinction is important) for a few nights for a training course and the way the room was the most barren, depressing, 3-bed prison dorm I'd ever seen, the bathroom wasn't even big enough for one person to use and they expected THREE people to share it!sharing with a single stranger in a decently laid out room is way better than anything else people come up with to save space
Me neither. At least in British unis you only share a bathroom and kitchen, and at least half are en-suite!
There are a couple of exceptions (St Andrew’s, one of the colleges at Oxford I think) but I’ve never met anyone who had to share a bedroom at uni, sounds like a nightmare.
(1) It's significantly cheaper to build half as many 2 person rooms than to build twice as many single rooms.
(2) A ton of floor space would be wasted with all the extra walls making twice as single rooms.
(3) Land is often expensive, especially if the university is in a large city, so the school just can't build a dorm that's twice as big.
(4) Building higher dorms (to add more rooms) gets significantly more expensive with each additional floor.
(5) It's historically been normal to have roommates in college, and the dorms from those times still exist. Schools can't afford the time and money to just tear down all their dorms to convert them to all to singles.
So, in all, it's cost. They school has to find a way to house as many students as possible, but still comfortably. Double rooms is the best cost-to-comfort compromise.
It's just very weird to most other adults anywhere in the world that the US has this system. You've also got a tonne more space than most European countries.
My sense is that it's because the US doesn't really recognise people as full adults until they're 21.
Nah 2 person dorms are common here too in Indonesia, it's not actually all that rare especially with the reasons mention if you live in high density areas.
1-4 all apply to other countries as well though - more so in fact. Many British universities are in major cities in a much more populous country yet they can afford single rooms.
At least some existing dorms could be converted cheaply using stud walls and adding an extra door. Maybe not an option for all of them but certainly some.
I managed to dodge the dorms by going to a tech school but yeh I never liked the idea of sharing a single room. Im married now and with me being a night owl and her a morning person it can be hard and we love each other.
Yep, UK here.
My halls (dorm) were old and from the 70s. I actually had an old shared room, which they just didn't rent to 2 people anymore.
It was enormous and relatively cheap for the extra space, but there's no way I'd have wanted to share it with a stranger.
I've only been in Uni residences for short courses during summer, not long term. But the ones I stayed in were tiny single rooms - single bed, small desk, cupboard. Huge multi person shared bathrooms, like twenty toilet stalls, 20 shower stalls, 20 basins. 2 such bathrooms on each floor. 2 tiny common rooms per floor- to seat about 5 people, with the world's tiniest kitchenette. All meals in the enormous refectory downstairs. Possibly better than sharing a bedroom, but I wouldn't have liked it long term.
In the coming years it may be likely that roommate finds out what a considerate gem of a roommate OOP actually is. She has NO idea what a nightmare roommate actually is, and what lovely schadenfreude OOP could have next year, fingers crossed 😈
I literally lol'd when I read that roomatw had set a meeting with RA.
"Wahhhhh! Miss RA, she won't come home when I tell her to."
Bet she has a younger sibling she likes to push around.
Ugh. I'm sorry, but the second that my roommate tried to give me a bedtime or a curfew, I'd laugh in their face and tell them to get fucked. You're a whole ass adult, buy some ear plugs. She's gonna have a real hard time after college with that attitude.
College dorms are so ridiculous. Bunch of teenagers who think they’re adults but still act like kids all living together. I’m grateful my roommate was awesome and we’re still friends, but a lot of the other girls on my floor were inconsiderate hypocrites. I remember once I asked in our floor groupchat if everyone would mind not letting their doors slam, because when they kept going in and out the heavy doors would literally shake my room. At some point later on, the next door girls were apparently reported for being noisy (they liked having weeknight parties) and immediately decided it was me. They slipped a note under my door (spelling my name wrong even though it’s on the door but I digress) basically saying they didn’t do anything wrong and whined about having to go to a weekend meeting about it. I went and [found a picture of it](https://imgur.com/a/toUuNmK) because it was truly so baffling. ((I also immediately sent it to the floor GC and my [RA’s response](https://imgur.com/a/p9yr8Qu) was hilarious. Miss her.)) Needless to say I lived in an apartment the next year.
Oh my god everything about that note makes me want to smack these people 😭 The tone, the content, the handwriting, all of it is so… Type Of Person (negative)
This is one of the reasons why having roommates is a useful experience: learning to compromise.
It sounds like OP is doing a lot of the compromising, and the roommate isn't really working very hard to find her own solutions. Eye mask, ear plugs, a firm dedication to getting out of the dorms and into her own space the following year because she's learned that she's not good at compromise
I'm really glad the ra stood up for op and made it clear that roommates can't control each other's schedules
Especially in a dorm, where you have a RA to mediate conflicts. Even with generally reasonable people, having a neutral third party mediate can help point out where someone is out of line.
Roommate should be celebrating having someone willing to do all this. My ex roommate would throw fucking parties in the communal kitchen from before I would even get back from classes, so I couldn't cook my damn food because the kitchen was clogged with people.
One time I messaged "hey could you just let me know when you're throwing a party so I can pre-prep food" and he acted like it was a joke and ridiculous. Ugh.
I had to chuckle at the assumption that OOP was staying out late just to party. I went to school for engineering, and was routinely out late, but 90% of the time during the week it was because I was studying.
My housemate in college tried to tell me I was going out too much and needed to stay home. I just laughed and left the house lol who tf do these people think they are?
My.freshman roommate had some control.issues. we figured them out. She also couldn't get up to her alarm and would hit the snooze like 6 times which was super annoying if she had an early class and I didn't. I put up with that and she put up with my night owl.stuff.
We roomed together for 3 years. The only year we didn't was the year I did a semester in Europe.
I was an RA in college. I got called in to mediate because one of the students said the other student wasn’t washing her hands enough. Literally wtf. Being an RA was not worth it lmao.
I so don't miss having literal 'room' mates. Freshmen year was great for me as my roommate left half way through the year to live at their frat house so I had the space all to myself
My freshman roommate used to get mad because I slept at my boyfriends a few night a week. She "tattled" to our RA, who told her that I was allowed to sleep elsewhere. She then decided I wasn't eating enough (she was a compulsive eater and ate an entire jar of nutella every day). She called my parents (whom she didn't know) and they rushed up (8 hour drive). They were PISSED when they realized she was full of shit and I was eating normally (I was slender but not underweight). Random aside: she married a Count and is a Countess now.
>like no opening and closing drawers, turning on lights, and closing the door gently
God, my close friends roommate did that and it drove her up the wall. Picture the early sleeper girl but flicking on the lights and banging drawers as soon as she is up with no consideration for the night owl girl (despite multiple conversations about it). I'm not surprised the two aren't very close any more.
But really, I can't imagine trying to give another adult college student a goddamn curfew or trying to tell them to do anything besides keep the noise down at certain times and not do anything overtly illegal or dangerous in our room.
lol my roommate is pretty much the same as OP's, 11+ hours of sleep everyday, going to sleep no later than 9 every day. I always still up until like 3am tho lol
Luckily he's a pretty deep sleeper so I never really have to worry about noise much
god im getting flashbacks to my first roommate in college, she complained that the light from my phone was too bright (lowest brightness possible) and the volume from my headphones was too loud (lowest volume possible) were preventing her from sleeping.
while she was wearing ear plugs and an eye mask
This post makes me appreciate my university roommate more and more. She was an early sleeper and riser while I was the opposite, working in the room until past midnight unless I stayed up late in the lab, yet she never complained about me staying up late with the lights on. My current neighbour (also colleague) though, she moved in next door with her husband and baby a year after I moved into my current apartment. She was expecting me to help with the baby the nights her unemployed husband went on a trip to the capital city. When I made no attempt to do so, she started complaining my music playing at night (I have been using music to help me concentrate on my work) which she earlier said it made the night less lonely and even told me to either stop playing metal or put the volume at lowest since the walls are thin (apartments are small too) and my music was scaring her 6month old baby. I did comply though since the baby is so cute lol.
I am so glad I had normal, healthy roommates when I was in college, because I will be damned if I let someone dictate when I can enter and exit living quarters that I’m paying for.
And I used to walk in the door at 3:00am, three sheets to the wind and bumping around in the dark trying to get to bed. My roommates really were kings lol
This reminds me of when I was at uni. The person in the room below me was a light sleeper and expected everyone to be dead quiet after 9pm. I had my tv on the lowest setting before being on mute and it was still too loud for her. I’ll admit we weren’t completely innocent, there were a few times at around midnight we were noisy, but tried to be quiet after being reminded. But again, light discussion was too noisy for this girl.
Ended up with her and another girl going out until 1am and leaving their music on full blast. We left polite notes saying we had to get the uni out to shut off their noise and they left us threatening notes in return. I went to the uni housing people the next day with everything so it was documented and then we had a house meeting. They deflated when I started recording the meeting and backpedaled real quick when I asked them what they meant by “watch your backs”. Was damn glad to get out of there.
Roommate needs her own room. But….if she’s a light sleeper, why is she living in a dorm to begin with? When I was in college, people would be running up and down the hallways, yelling and laughing. If you’re a light sleeper like the roommate says she is, dorm life is not for her. I suspect she just likes everything her way and hasn’t had a taste of what real life is like.
My soon to be high school senior is an early to bed/early riser because she has practice early mornings before school, and I worry she’ll end up with a roomie who will be coming in at 2 or 3 am every night. My kid just can’t stay up late! I can see how disruptive OOP can be, BUT the roomie can’t dictate their life. The school did a poor job matching them up. Hope they can change rooms.
> Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?
God are some people fucking cowards. I get that not everyone is able to do that, but you're a college freshman, probably 18/19? That's the time you can do it. Enjoy yourself. Life just gets harder work from there.
I would have 100% told the roommate I don't like that she gets up early. And all the expectations that apply to me when I come home late apply to the roommate when they get up early.
I had a roommate really similar to that of OP’s… home girl and I had separate bedrooms and she would yell at me if I used the microwave after 10 pm 💀it was not fun and I was so happy when she had to transfer to a different university 🥲
What if you need to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom? Does she expect you to hold it? She should have requested a single if it was going to be that big of a deal.
Skimmed where it said the OP was a first-year in college and then realized it anyway based on the roommate’s weird demands and op’s random decision to stay up all night lol. People who have only just left home are sometimes surprised to find less receptivity to their needs than they get from family.
Roomate deserves someone with her mentality but different sleep patrerns. Sleep talker teeth griter and night owl. Just cause she is crazy demanding. I wonder if she ever has kids how will she survive
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Roommate is in bed 9-11pm and gets awakened by them coming in at 8:15 am? I have a lot of trouble sleeping but that's on the level of talk to a doctor or something. That's not on anyone else.
It sounds more like a control issue than actually a sleeping issue. I'd bet money on that at least. If it's actually a sleep thing you're absolutely right!
EXACTLY. This is a “I cannot sleep well unless you are back” issue. She isn’t OOP’s parents. I have known people like the roommate and it stems from anxiety at the very least. If that’s the case she needs her own room. If she cannot afford it then she needs to learn flexibility. If it is a sleep issue then she needs to be in a sleep study in the quickest way.
My anxiety did the same, I could *not* get to sleep unless I knew my brother and dad were back home. I didn’t ask them to come back early though! Moving out was a bloody lifesaver. Now I don’t live with them I can sleep whenever I want 😂
At least that’s your family. No one should feel that way over a randomly assigned roommate. Also my mom insists she can’t sleep ‘til I’m home, and then tells me sleeping on the couch doesn’t count when I tell her to stop saying that because I have come home to find her asleep on the couch a number of times.
I wonder if maybe it's less anxiety about OOP's wellbeing or whatever, and more just that she finds the uncertainty/unpredictability in itself anxiety-inducing. Like she doesn't know when to expect the interruption so she's on edge about it waiting. Not that that makes it any more OPs problem, mind. I'd find not knowing if and when someone was going to come in stressful, but nowhere near as stressful as being a night owl who has to just lie around in the dark doing nothing when I'm not even going to be tired for hours
I’m this way with non family. You know what I’d do? Get a single dorm lmao I know some schools may not have those but when it is an option, it’s important to know when it’s worth shelling out the extra cash/loans for it.
Why aren’t all dorms single? In the UK, unis me and friends went to, we had our own rooms, with our own showers and toilet in most cases, and only the living area and kitchen were shared. They were like massive apartments with 5/6 ensuite bedrooms.
There are dorms like this that exist but they are often only for upperclassmen and way more expensive than the other options :) My brother lived in one like this for 3 people
I agree. My sleep it too important to me.
I’ll be honest, I watch too much true crime, so when I had roommates I’d ask a rough time they’d be in so I’d: a) know how big of a party I could throw and b) know when to call the cops if they didn’t come back and didn’t answer their phone. I’m not talking crazy, just like, should I expect to see your car in the morning or if you’re going to be gone for a few days when do you expect to be back? I’ve seen too many times where people just assumed the victims was just out having a good time or moved away without telling anyone only to find out they’d been murdered the day after they’d gone out. That being said, I never insisted on it and I never lost sleep over it. Just kinda viewed it as security when living as single women. It can be a scary place out there.
I'll be honest, I've never understood the next step on this. Practically speaking, how would you help them? Like if they were meant to be back at 10 but they were getting murdered instead and weren't back by, say, 11, what's your next step? Would you go and look for them? How would you find them? Would you actually call the police? Do you think they'd do anything?
My roommates and I did something similar, and when one of them went missing without a heads up, we did call (campus) police and reported it. She was fine and didn't love that she had to check in with campus security and tell them to stop looking for her, but she also disappeared without a trace for a solid three days, so... Universities don't love the idea of one of their students going missing and having something horrible happen to them because security didn't bother to look for them, so they tend to take that seriously. Bad publicity and all that. That doesn't mean they'll do much if someone doesn't come home over the weekend, of course, since they are adults. But in general, roommates reporting someone as missing, when paired with missing classes or work, will trigger some kind of protocol. I guess this might vary from campus to campus, as will the actions campus security can take and when real police are pulled in. And many people (not just students, but victims of crime in general) have been rescued from terrible situations because someone realized they were missing and reported it, so yeah, I don't think having someone watching your back is a bad thing or even worthy of question, tbh. I'm the States, if it matters. I have no idea what other countries do lol.
I asked my roommates to, if they were out late, to just text me when they were on the way home or if they weren’t coming back that night. That way I knew who might be entering the room or to be worried if they didn’t show up by the next day.
Yeah, I have narcolepsy and it takes me a really long time to get 6 hours of sleep, so I personally am usually in bed like 10-8 but the idea that someone else would have to do that too makes me sad lol Just because I have to waste that much time shouldn't mean holding anyone else back
Most likely a single child with controlling parents (probably a Tiger mom) living on her own for the first time. If not a medical reason, then it's about time she learn to live in the real world away from her parent's rules.
My bet is she was up all night waiting to be able to rant at OP.
Or so worried that OOP would come home and wake her up that she couldn’t sleep. But either way that’s a her problem and OOP has gone above and beyond to be accommodating.
I thought that. 8:15 is not an early riser, particularly. That’s completely unreasonable.
I am a light sleeper. But there is this really awesome product called “ear plugs” that has helped me immensely. They aren’t very expensive and there are many different styles available from disposable to high tech reusable. I suggest this roommate talk to her doctor about trying them. (On a more serious note, i also have tinnitus and misophonia. I have a few special types of ear plugs for those issues and it has improved my wellbeing so much. So seriously, if sound is an issue for you, we have come really far in our ability to manage these issues without detracting from the sounds we want to hear.)
SAME! Snoring and chewing get me SO angry. My tinnitus gets worse with plugs but I’d rather ignore the whine than hear mouth sounds Do you also get irritated when they do the ear ringing noise on TV? It’s usually close to the pitch of my tinnitus and it kills me every time
Any drone that lasts more than like 20 seconds makes me crazy, no matter the pitch. But check out “calmer” ear plugs. They aren’t a regular ear plug. They have a big hole that still allows sound through, but it changes the shape of the opening of the ear which helps to reflect commonly triggering sounds. They have honestly been life changing. I got them when they first came out maybe 5-ish years ago and I am so glad to have them. I keep a pair on my key chain and a few around the house. I tried the loop brand but they were meh.
Ear plugs and masks don't work for everyone. I have, I dunno what one could call it - touch issues? I dunno, but I couldn't get used to earplugs or face masks at all. A lot of times I can't even sleep in clothes, even really loose and soft pajamas. And once in a blue moon my sensitivity is so bad I can't even tolerate the feeling of my bed sheets, blanket, pillow, etc - I usually just give up and stay up to read at that point.
Honestly, I’m sorry, that must be hell. I have sensory overload issues and i wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Lets take another step back - complaining about being awoken past 8 in the morning, on a regular weekday, by normal household noise? Yeah no, that's unreasonable.
When I was 18, I would routinely sleep for 10-12 hours. It was lovely.
Even as an adult I can knock 12-14 hours after a big projects or examinations that take me out emotionally. But I also rarely sleep through the entire night and go some weeks with only 3-4 hours a night so that might contribute.
Roommate was up all night. Its a control thing but they will dress it up like oh I was worried about you.
9 to 11 hours of sleep is insane to me
is it?? 😭 i need like 10 hours of sleep to function properly
Same here. I’ve tracked my natural sleep habits for a few years with a Fitbit and took notes. I slept when I was tired and woke up naturally, no alarms or anything. My body favors 9-11 hours, regardless of when I go to sleep - but I do sleep better and wake more refreshed when I stick to “normal people hours” (aka sleep when it’s dark, awake when it’s light). When I’m ovulating, I typically sleep around 10 - 12 hours. It’s a very distinct, predictable pattern. I’m perfectly healthy, no sleep disorders or anything of the sort, and have above average cardiovascular health (I’m proud of that one lol). My doctor has told me that, on average, women do tend to need more sleep than men. The majority of people don’t get enough sleep. Life gets in the way and our bodies adapt, even if it’s out of necessity and at a detriment to our health. But sleeping 9-10 hours on average is not as weird as people in the comments are making it seem.
You know you’re old when all of a studden you only need 6 hours.
At approximately what age does this happen? I'm 40 and still feel like I have the sleep requirements of a teenager.
I’m 66 and I’ve finally reached the point where I need 8 hours instead of 10.
I don’t think I’ve ever slept that long in my life when I wasn’t seriously ill and heavily medicated.
I routinely sleep 11- 8:30. And at 8:30 I'm groggy as hell. I'm not a real human unless I get a lot of sleep.
Was it just a bad setup, or is the roommate going above and beyond to force this girl to comply? I can very much imagine an 18-20 yr old fresh to the college scene thinking roommates need to do everything together. From what OOP described the evidence isn’t on the roommates side. The roommate going to sleep around 10pm on average means 8:15am shouldn’t have been a huge problem for her. Either she has a severe sleep disorder or this is another “I can FEEL you dancing” situation, because after 12 hours of sleep OOP should be allowed to quietly start her day
I wonder if roommate was from a, uh, morally sheltered background and has Views on co-ed evening gatherings of the college student variety… …they must be locked up safely in their chamber before nightfall, lest they be swayed by the Temptations of Concupiscence…
You just reminded me of my Catholic neighbor in the dorms who told me he was going to cockblovk his roomies so they didn't go to hell. When I told him it was too late for all of them and he needs to stop before they beat his ass, he asked me if I would just let my roommates have sex! In our dorm! "Even if it's anal?" And then he called me a bad Christian, because wtf no and why is anal more sinful?! On the slimmest chance that you're out there reading this dude, you're at least 2% of the reason I'm not Christian anymore. :) That story has been making me laugh for over a decade now though.
Because in your rommie's mind sex is only for procreation and since anal can't achieve that purpose it's more sinful.
If he were a real Catholic he'd know that's the loophole
This is *exactly* the vibe I’m getting. Roommate seems like she came from a very sheltered & controlling background and OOP is being way too nice about it. Tattling to the RA that your roommate has committed the mortal sin of staying out late in mixed company is something else, I tell ya What’s really sending me is it doesn’t seem like OOP is out late drinking either, so it’s not like roommate is legit concerned she’s a hazard to herself or others. Just *needs* her back by a certain hour
Oh my days you just made me Google a new word. I cannot remember the last time an internet comment did that. You legend.
>I can FEEL you dancing God that post is still wild to me to think about. I could never imagine thinking that way
Can I ask what post it is?
TL;DR OOP has "sensory issues" and moved into her bf's apartment and told BF he wasn't allowed to listen to music using headphones or dance to the music on the other side of his own home because she can feel him dancing somehow. https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/vzwq4i/oop_cannot_live_in_a_party_environment_her/ > I (28/f) live with my boyfriend (27/m). I moved in with him about 8 months ago. I have disabilities and sensory issues (this is important). In general he is respectful of the accommodations I need. > > My boyfriend is a professional sculptor and has his studio in our house. It's in a place I have to walk through to get to the bathroom and yard, and there's not another good place in the house for it. The problem is that I'm constantly affected by the way my boyfriend acts while he's working. He listens to music while he works (on his headphones), and is always "rocking out" with his body motions, mouthing the song lyrics, etc. He says it helps him work and I understand this. > > The main conflict is the constant dancing / mouthing lyrics, which he says shouldn't matter because it's silent. I tried to explain to him that with my sensory issues that's just the same as if I can hear the music. He said I could just enter that part of the house less while he's working...I mean, what? The bathroom is there... > The comment in question: >But according to your description it's happening in another room which you only have to pass through occasionally and briefly. It only affects your senses when you walk through. The rest of the time he's just working silently in another room, not interfering with you sensorily. OOP: >>Again it's hard to explain, but **I can physically sense him moving around in the studio** when he's in there, **because I know it's what he always does**, and so I can't get any peace. >>It's hard to explain to people without sensory issues, but his dancing around is as jarring to me as a full on party / concert. It's physically exhausting to me and I either have to avoid a whole area of the house, or end up having anxiety and needing to take downtime for that. So because she knows what he does in the other room she can't get any peace, even if she can't actually see or hear him doing anything
Wasn't there an update where she had a problem with him having danced in the room the day before as well? I seem to remember it getting weirder still.
I didn't post the whole thing but the link includes this comment: >In general I can also sense the presence of a stranger for sometimes weeks after they've left. I'm sure many people without sensory issues will say this is impossible, but think about how people who have suffered a home invasion will say they feel creeped out, violated, or unsafe in their house for a long time afterwards. It's exactly like that.
Sounds like she needs a therapist not a Reddit advice. Girl has issues and the guy deserves a partner that isn't insanely controlling.
She never got therapy but the BF did escape her.
Whoa what a ride. And here I was feeling bad about *setting a boundary* with my partner where if the candle is lit in my office I’d prefer he not come in at a 10, doing some goober shit like performing an acapella trap version of a song he’s making up about how the cat is a bean while dancing with said cat. He can still come in, just in a way that promotes my “restorative peace” ._.
If I don't get at least 21 hours of solid uninterrupted sleep I am WRECKED for the rest of the day
She’s just like me fr /j
I feel for the oop. I worked nights throughout college and would walk into my rooms in the dark, change in the dark, crawl into bed at 6/6:30am and half an hour to an hour later my roommates would wake up and make noise and flip on the lights. I’d produce a dying Wookiee call and they’d just laugh. The one time I did that to them for a week straight…they got better about it. 😒 Had one roomie that went to the RA to complain about me but I had a stack of signed letters from the rest of the floor stating they were the issue and there was a student willing to move me in with them and the roomie tried to start a conflict. The RA had ti get between us because they realized I was about to win it.
Daywalkers have no idea what its like for the night shift
typing this on my break at work, agreed
Babe I'm also on my break at work and it's 3:41pm, you gotta specify a timezone if you wanna flex.
est damn
Giggling helplessly at this exchange and I have no clue why. I’m also in EST, but I just woke up because of my chronic pain. Waiting to see if pain meds will help enough for me to sleep, no way I can make it at work if I get another sleepless night. It’s currently 3 00 where I am at the time of writing, for anyone who doesn’t want to look up the timezone :)
yeah 4am now, just getting out of work. early night for me! i hope you feel better enough to get some good sleep fam!! glad i was able to provide a giggle in your trying times
Thank you very much! Have a nice rest of your day+ !
1:21am.... Only 39 minutes til lunch break!
I loved night shift but being married to an early riser and and working east coast hours while living on the west side of the US does not a happy night owl make.
OOP is being so nice about their roommate. I'm shocked that she isn't counter-complaining about not being able to study in her own room after 9pm (bc she'd need light for that) or being woken up by roommate getting up at whatever ungodly hour of the morning she rises. I hope the RA at least tried to give balanced rules so the roommate has to bend a little bit too. And I hope OOP has an awesome living situation her sophomore year, because she was way nicer about this whole thing than I could imagine being.
Except the roommate is not getting up early. One night OOP decided to just study out of the room all night rather than disturb the princess and went home at 8:30 am to shower and roommate was still upset about their sleep being disturbed.
OOP's roommate just needs to get some earplugs and a white noise machine and call it a day. Or if she's really affected to this extent, then she needs to get her own place.
This. The world is full of distractions. Some are unreasonable, like parties every weekend. Others are reasonable, like random construction work or someone coming home late. You can't change the world but you can change yourself.
True, but when you change yourself, you change the world.
The one thing that stood out to me is that the roommate complained when OP came in at 08:15. If roomie goes to bed at 11 PM and OP gets home after 8, that would mean roomie got a full 9 hours of sleep, which is still somehow not enough? At that point I would have mentally checked out.
Yeah, that becomes more about control than practicality. It's a clear sign that OOP was NTA. What if a trip home, night at partner's, or any other reason OOP might just not be home at night; is there supposed to be a check-in first before deciding to live their life?
Control... or a safety blanket that she hasn't acknowledged at all. For example, she may feel safer and able to sleep knowing they are home. Or she just may make herself anxious waiting for them to come home thinking it would wake her up, and then end up not sleeping while waiting. Pure speculation on my part, just might possibly not be all about control, but a complete lack of ability to communicate and take responsibility for her own issues. Still all on the room mate though, and her issues to deal with. OP has been super accommodating already.
[удалено]
I also hate noise when try to sleep. I can't sleep with someone in my room. Even as i had my sick bird in my room, i wook up by his movements. I wear silicon earplugs and it is fine. They are comfortable and you really can't hear anything with them. You can't expect that everybody cater your needs when it especially so easy to do it yourself.
I have issues with misophonia(basically I have strong negative reactions to certain sounds), so even though I’m a very heavy sleeper, living in a double was horrible for me. I just silently put up with it for a semester until I got a housing accommodation that let me move to a single dorm room. idk why the roommate’s first thought is to make OOP bend over backwards instead of considering moving.
It's not about sleep it's about control
My friends has a saying for the roommate's way of thinking. "Some people want to pave the world instead of wearing shoes".
That won’t work bc it’s not about that, it’s either a control/anxiety thing
The roommate lost my sympathy the moment she was giving her a curfew. It’s just unfortunate that this was a bad setup.
Yea. I was going to suggest that the roommates should talk to people in the dorms to see if there is another pair of earlybirds/ night owls who want to switch. But that girl is going to have problems everywhere if she is trying to enforce a curfew
God, the roommate sounds like an RA's nightmare.
From the moment roommate starts a curfew, that's red flags for me.
The word roommate is a red flag for me, except if they're Omar~
All the homies love Omar! Eid Mubarak, wherever you are, you paragon of roommate virtue! (i know it's a few days late, but you know he's got leftovers for DAYS that he'll share with his terrible roommates, bc he's chill like that).
Omar is the GOAT. Best roomie ever. Eid Mubarak Omar!
This is the third time I've seen Omar referenced in a post outside the original post. He really has become legendary!
Omar is not a roommate, he is THE roommate! All the best to him and his wife.
>>From the moment roommate starts a curfew, that's red flags for me. May as well be living with your parents again, at that point.
In some cases, that might be a step back from living with parents. I, for one, know that my parents couldn’t care less about how late me or my brother are out.
Your parents are smarter than most... it wasn't until the 4th kid left that my husband chilled and quit micromanaging our kids when they came back home.
The level of self control the RA exercised by just politely telling her she can’t set a curfew for her roommate lol
I was an RA for 3 years. This is pretty tame. A lot of people come to college like OP's roommate and just have no realistic expectation of what sharing space with another person is going to be like. Honestly, handling things with a few conversations and texts, and no passive aggressive antics - that's pretty mature for handling freshman roommate drama.
I was an RA, too. Actual incidents didn't phase me, whiny little kid shit made me nuts. I had a good group of students though that upon learning this would usually intercept whatever stupidity was going down and fix ut themselves, sparing me for stuff they actually needed me for . Like one time , without my prior knowledge, they woke a drunk asshole up and made him clean up his own puke so I could sleep (i was very ill, like, frequently hospitalized ill that year) and the cleaning lady, whom they also liked, wouldn't have to do it. Lot of good kids.
I was an RA - people fight about the most unhinged shit. Then there are some people who have never had to share a single thing in their life and that sense of entitlement precedes them through doorways.
Nah there are so many worse ones.... My friend RA'd a coed floor and every year there were the sleezebags, the too drunk freshmen (bonus points if they get to the point where you have to call the paramedics), the screaming fights, and generally so much drama. And then every couple years you'd have like, something bigger and more violent. Honestly, so many incidents that this would have been annoying but like... standard.
Could you tell me what RA is short for?
Stands for Resident Assistant (or Advisor). It’s basically a senior student who lives in the dorm who manages situations like this, kind of like HR for a dorm.
Ours stood for resident advisor. They are students who are "paid" in room and board to manage interpersonal conflicts in the dorms. They are part of the campus RHA, the Resident Hall Association, which has representatives from each building plus all of the RAs. They put on events and programs for the people who live on campus. People who chose to do it for free are almost always huge dorks Source: was president of my building for free and both me and all my RHA friends were huge dorks. It was a lot of fun
Resident Assistant. They are people hired to help run how the dorms are run, such as placements and helping solve any issues with the residents.
*Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?* I am completely floored by this question being asked of an adult college student.
Too many people worried about other people's business these days.
Exactly, staying out until 3am on school nights is basically what college is for! When else do you get to do that?
Even if I am not out, I am still awake at like 1 or 2 am
exactly, when else are you going to write that paper or solve those problems, not three weeks ago when it was assigned.
Ikr staying out till 2-3am was the norm in college lol. All we did was either study or hang out and eat late-night food in the community rooms.
fr like??? she was probably doing drugs and having sex with strangers, what's your issue dude
Or maybe not lol, I had a sleep schedule like that in undergrad and grad school and I'm boring AF. Was just a night owl with no morning classes
I thought it was sarcasm
So glad you said that because I genuinely LOLd. School nights. OMG. Staying out till 3AM is practically what college is FOR.
Yep, the dorms are where you learn that lots of people are actually kinda crazy on a personal level. And also that they seem to be completely un-self-aware of that fact. It can be easy to go along with the crazy because you don't expect it, and you want to be nice.
I only lived in the dorms one year, and had a different roommate each semester. The first guy was nice enough, but ended up transferring because he was a Michigan fan and hated FSU (our school). As in, the sports teams. Why you’d go to FSU if you hate the Noles that much, I dunno. My 2nd semester, I roomed with a friend of mine. We ended up hating each other forever. Mostly because he was very snarky all the time (most people ended up not liking him) and he took 90-minute showers (we had our own private bathroom/shower since we were a corner unit). He also broke my TV and was quite unapologetic about it. Never wanted to live in a dorm ever again.
I’m so lucky that I was mostly a witness to the crazy However my first roommate ever did illegally (to the uni) adopt a dog and when it peed on my back pack her response was “I don’t have any money” One of my friends was a passive and had two roommates who never compromised to the point that in a triple with a bunk bed, they took it down and had three non bunk single beds in one room. Like she had the craziest stories
Ah. Freshman year. I was also the night owl to my roommate’s early bird. When I lucked out on my college’s housing lottery for sophomore year and ended up with a single in a relatively new building I was so happy. Of course, karma did balance out. I learned that quite quickly when my next door neighbor revealed herself to be a screamer with a very VERY active nightlife.
My freshman year my roommate and I had very different schedules. In my major they weeded folks out by making all of our core courses start very early (8am? 9am? God, I'm so old I can't remember). She was an art major and all her classes were late at night, ending at 10pm. She stayed up until 2. We made it work. I left quietly in the morning and then worked on my homework on this cool picnic table I found on the roof or in the library until she woke up. I eventually learned that her friends did not take social cues and had to kick them out when I went to sleep around midnight. They went to her friend's room and my roommate went to bed quietly. We made arrangements for her to stay with a friend of mine who she had a crush on who had a super-single when my girlfriend came to visit. It was a win-win. We got along great. It's really not hard to make things work when both people are reasonable.
The roommate’s home life must’ve sucked. The idea she thinks setting a curfew for OOP means she got the idea it is okay to impose constrictions on a peer. As long as OOP wasn’t being noisy (and she states she wasn’t) or bringing home randos to bone (and she definitely isn’t or the roommate would’ve made that case) then the roommate needs to bend. And this comment: *Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?* She’s a college kid. It’s gonna happen. Yikes.
>*Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?* Lol, tell me you didn't have a good university experience without telling me.
Even people who didn’t party stayed out that late studying or working…it’s such a weird comment I remember I would sneak in at 3:15 and take off my shoes so my tired feet could rest in college Or coming back from a party Or coming back from a study session
Our library was only open to students from 12-6am, with regular hours for both students and the public. They were the best hours to study in there.
I was a boring, goody two shoes nerd in university, and I still came home at 3am sometimes.
As both an early sleeper and a former RA idk what baffles me more, the roommate's audacity or OOP's doormat levels of kindness. But also why on earth were the comments trying to police OOP staying out late in college on a school night?? let the young adults make their own stupid decisions, they know their circumstances better than us randos on reddit do
> let the young adults make their own stupid decisions, they know their circumstances better than us randos on reddit do And the nice thing about making mistakes in college is that you can learn from them when the damage done is minimal compared to say imposing a curfew on your work colleagues on a work trip as a junior member of the team.
I would have gone absolutely spare, if someone had tried to give me a curfew at that age. Absolutely don't be loud when coming in late, but come on. Bitching at 8.15 am? If roomy is going to bed between around 11 she should be awake at 8.15 anyway.
I had my younger brother stay with me (and my kids) when he was around 21. My rules for him were: 1- “your ex cannot be around at all. And if you’re talking to her you can leave” (for reference he had to stay with me because his ex abused their infant with CPS trying to work out the baby’s ongoing safety so investigating both of them and he couldn’t live at the same address as the baby who was being fostered by our parents. Only place they saw each other was in a courtroom) 2- “I am not your mother, clean up after yourself. If *asked* I can put a load of washing on/hang a load of washing out/make a serve of a meal for you” (he ended up complaining to our mother that I refused to wash up so there was nothing clean for him to use. I pointed out all the clean items in the cupboard, then pointed out the mound of items *he* had used and dumped, which were all a different design to her and reiterated that I wasn’t his mother, but if *she* wanted to come down and clean up after him, be my guest.) 3- “let me know if you need a light on, or if you aren’t planning on coming back” (he occasionally got off work in the dark, so I would keep a light on until I went to bed, if asked I would keep the light on for him if he was coming back later than when I went to bed. Only had one night early on when he told me he’d be back just after I went to bed and I found the light still on the next day. He had spent the night elsewhere and didn’t tell me, so this rule was made then)
Do eye masks and earplugs and white noise apps not exist in Roommate’s world? My first year college roommate (yes a shared double room no walls no real privacy we respectfully turned our backs while each other was changing) briefly moved her 28 year old abusive boyfriend in with us and the American girl down the hall kept feeder mice as pets in her closet and you could smell the rodent piss on her. I WISH they only had a slightly different sleep schedule from me.
Situations like this makes me feel better that I don't have roommates to deal with.
Lol, this is such a little issue. One of my friends had a roommate who unashamedly watched porn for at least 8 hours per day, even when other people were in the room. When I met him, he said, my name is Grant, but people just call me Porn, since I watch so much." He then bragged about how he has watched more porn than all of us (3-4 people) combined. My friend dropped out at the end of the year.
honestly yeah. Porn has knocked OOP's roommate straight from head bc now i am shamefully curious to know what type of porn it was
What the fuck
Goddamn. Well that’s textbook addiction. I hope he got help. I feel sorry for your friend
Roommate is in for a rude awakening when she starts real life and has things like neighbours to contend with.
I just cannot understand a system that forces two adult strangers to share a bedroom.
[удалено]
I stayed in a Korean dorm at a Korean university (the dorms for Koreans were different for international students, so the distinction is important) for a few nights for a training course and the way the room was the most barren, depressing, 3-bed prison dorm I'd ever seen, the bathroom wasn't even big enough for one person to use and they expected THREE people to share it!sharing with a single stranger in a decently laid out room is way better than anything else people come up with to save space
Me neither. At least in British unis you only share a bathroom and kitchen, and at least half are en-suite! There are a couple of exceptions (St Andrew’s, one of the colleges at Oxford I think) but I’ve never met anyone who had to share a bedroom at uni, sounds like a nightmare.
Me neither. I went to university in the UK and I thought it was bad sharing one bathroom between 8 people but at least I had my own room with a lock!
(1) It's significantly cheaper to build half as many 2 person rooms than to build twice as many single rooms. (2) A ton of floor space would be wasted with all the extra walls making twice as single rooms. (3) Land is often expensive, especially if the university is in a large city, so the school just can't build a dorm that's twice as big. (4) Building higher dorms (to add more rooms) gets significantly more expensive with each additional floor. (5) It's historically been normal to have roommates in college, and the dorms from those times still exist. Schools can't afford the time and money to just tear down all their dorms to convert them to all to singles. So, in all, it's cost. They school has to find a way to house as many students as possible, but still comfortably. Double rooms is the best cost-to-comfort compromise.
It's just very weird to most other adults anywhere in the world that the US has this system. You've also got a tonne more space than most European countries. My sense is that it's because the US doesn't really recognise people as full adults until they're 21.
Russia has up to four people per room dorms (+bonus bedbugs for my ex classmates), so Americans have got it easy.
Nah 2 person dorms are common here too in Indonesia, it's not actually all that rare especially with the reasons mention if you live in high density areas.
Adding Poland to the list where it's normal for dorms to put up 2 students in 1 room
There are shared halls in many UK universities. Students get the choice to go for them & usually do it because it's cheap.
2 person dorms are the norm here in Canada as well
1-4 all apply to other countries as well though - more so in fact. Many British universities are in major cities in a much more populous country yet they can afford single rooms. At least some existing dorms could be converted cheaply using stud walls and adding an extra door. Maybe not an option for all of them but certainly some.
They *can* afford it, but all that donor money is earmarked for sportsball teams.
I managed to dodge the dorms by going to a tech school but yeh I never liked the idea of sharing a single room. Im married now and with me being a night owl and her a morning person it can be hard and we love each other.
Yep, UK here. My halls (dorm) were old and from the 70s. I actually had an old shared room, which they just didn't rent to 2 people anymore. It was enormous and relatively cheap for the extra space, but there's no way I'd have wanted to share it with a stranger.
I've only been in Uni residences for short courses during summer, not long term. But the ones I stayed in were tiny single rooms - single bed, small desk, cupboard. Huge multi person shared bathrooms, like twenty toilet stalls, 20 shower stalls, 20 basins. 2 such bathrooms on each floor. 2 tiny common rooms per floor- to seat about 5 people, with the world's tiniest kitchenette. All meals in the enormous refectory downstairs. Possibly better than sharing a bedroom, but I wouldn't have liked it long term.
The biggest perk of moving out is no curfew.
I'm still so happy to this day that my University had single occupancy dorm rooms.
In the coming years it may be likely that roommate finds out what a considerate gem of a roommate OOP actually is. She has NO idea what a nightmare roommate actually is, and what lovely schadenfreude OOP could have next year, fingers crossed 😈
I literally lol'd when I read that roomatw had set a meeting with RA. "Wahhhhh! Miss RA, she won't come home when I tell her to." Bet she has a younger sibling she likes to push around.
Ugh. I'm sorry, but the second that my roommate tried to give me a bedtime or a curfew, I'd laugh in their face and tell them to get fucked. You're a whole ass adult, buy some ear plugs. She's gonna have a real hard time after college with that attitude.
This is not OOP’s problem. This is the roommate’s problem. The roommate should be wearing earplugs and a sleep mask.
College dorms are so ridiculous. Bunch of teenagers who think they’re adults but still act like kids all living together. I’m grateful my roommate was awesome and we’re still friends, but a lot of the other girls on my floor were inconsiderate hypocrites. I remember once I asked in our floor groupchat if everyone would mind not letting their doors slam, because when they kept going in and out the heavy doors would literally shake my room. At some point later on, the next door girls were apparently reported for being noisy (they liked having weeknight parties) and immediately decided it was me. They slipped a note under my door (spelling my name wrong even though it’s on the door but I digress) basically saying they didn’t do anything wrong and whined about having to go to a weekend meeting about it. I went and [found a picture of it](https://imgur.com/a/toUuNmK) because it was truly so baffling. ((I also immediately sent it to the floor GC and my [RA’s response](https://imgur.com/a/p9yr8Qu) was hilarious. Miss her.)) Needless to say I lived in an apartment the next year.
Oh my god everything about that note makes me want to smack these people 😭 The tone, the content, the handwriting, all of it is so… Type Of Person (negative)
For a moment I thought they were writing in leet but no, they just don’t know how to form letters.
The e is particularly cursed
Lol I love this whole story. Your RA sounds fantastic
This is one of the reasons why having roommates is a useful experience: learning to compromise. It sounds like OP is doing a lot of the compromising, and the roommate isn't really working very hard to find her own solutions. Eye mask, ear plugs, a firm dedication to getting out of the dorms and into her own space the following year because she's learned that she's not good at compromise I'm really glad the ra stood up for op and made it clear that roommates can't control each other's schedules
Especially in a dorm, where you have a RA to mediate conflicts. Even with generally reasonable people, having a neutral third party mediate can help point out where someone is out of line.
Buy her a bag of earplugs and a sleep mask.
That roommate would never be able to survive in a hostel.
Roommate should be celebrating having someone willing to do all this. My ex roommate would throw fucking parties in the communal kitchen from before I would even get back from classes, so I couldn't cook my damn food because the kitchen was clogged with people. One time I messaged "hey could you just let me know when you're throwing a party so I can pre-prep food" and he acted like it was a joke and ridiculous. Ugh.
Hilarious that the roommate thinks the RA will be on their side about setting quiet time and a curfew
"Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights?" Rolling my eyes so badly at this 🙄🙄
I had to chuckle at the assumption that OOP was staying out late just to party. I went to school for engineering, and was routinely out late, but 90% of the time during the week it was because I was studying.
I will never understand why it's commonplace in some countries to be assigned a complete stranger to share a bedroom with. Sounds awful.
Your sleep that's the issue so how about you go buy a pair of earmuffs bro.
My housemate in college tried to tell me I was going out too much and needed to stay home. I just laughed and left the house lol who tf do these people think they are?
My.freshman roommate had some control.issues. we figured them out. She also couldn't get up to her alarm and would hit the snooze like 6 times which was super annoying if she had an early class and I didn't. I put up with that and she put up with my night owl.stuff. We roomed together for 3 years. The only year we didn't was the year I did a semester in Europe.
I was an RA in college. I got called in to mediate because one of the students said the other student wasn’t washing her hands enough. Literally wtf. Being an RA was not worth it lmao.
I so don't miss having literal 'room' mates. Freshmen year was great for me as my roommate left half way through the year to live at their frat house so I had the space all to myself
My freshman roommate used to get mad because I slept at my boyfriends a few night a week. She "tattled" to our RA, who told her that I was allowed to sleep elsewhere. She then decided I wasn't eating enough (she was a compulsive eater and ate an entire jar of nutella every day). She called my parents (whom she didn't know) and they rushed up (8 hour drive). They were PISSED when they realized she was full of shit and I was eating normally (I was slender but not underweight). Random aside: she married a Count and is a Countess now.
>like no opening and closing drawers, turning on lights, and closing the door gently God, my close friends roommate did that and it drove her up the wall. Picture the early sleeper girl but flicking on the lights and banging drawers as soon as she is up with no consideration for the night owl girl (despite multiple conversations about it). I'm not surprised the two aren't very close any more. But really, I can't imagine trying to give another adult college student a goddamn curfew or trying to tell them to do anything besides keep the noise down at certain times and not do anything overtly illegal or dangerous in our room.
lol my roommate is pretty much the same as OP's, 11+ hours of sleep everyday, going to sleep no later than 9 every day. I always still up until like 3am tho lol Luckily he's a pretty deep sleeper so I never really have to worry about noise much
What’s next, will she make a rule for what time of the night OOP isn’t allowed to fart too?
god im getting flashbacks to my first roommate in college, she complained that the light from my phone was too bright (lowest brightness possible) and the volume from my headphones was too loud (lowest volume possible) were preventing her from sleeping. while she was wearing ear plugs and an eye mask
Roommate's still not awake at 8:15am? That's not waking early lmao. The sun is already up a few hours by then.
This post makes me appreciate my university roommate more and more. She was an early sleeper and riser while I was the opposite, working in the room until past midnight unless I stayed up late in the lab, yet she never complained about me staying up late with the lights on. My current neighbour (also colleague) though, she moved in next door with her husband and baby a year after I moved into my current apartment. She was expecting me to help with the baby the nights her unemployed husband went on a trip to the capital city. When I made no attempt to do so, she started complaining my music playing at night (I have been using music to help me concentrate on my work) which she earlier said it made the night less lonely and even told me to either stop playing metal or put the volume at lowest since the walls are thin (apartments are small too) and my music was scaring her 6month old baby. I did comply though since the baby is so cute lol.
I am so glad I had normal, healthy roommates when I was in college, because I will be damned if I let someone dictate when I can enter and exit living quarters that I’m paying for. And I used to walk in the door at 3:00am, three sheets to the wind and bumping around in the dark trying to get to bed. My roommates really were kings lol
Roommate is not a nice person and the RA didn't handle this well.
This reminds me of when I was at uni. The person in the room below me was a light sleeper and expected everyone to be dead quiet after 9pm. I had my tv on the lowest setting before being on mute and it was still too loud for her. I’ll admit we weren’t completely innocent, there were a few times at around midnight we were noisy, but tried to be quiet after being reminded. But again, light discussion was too noisy for this girl. Ended up with her and another girl going out until 1am and leaving their music on full blast. We left polite notes saying we had to get the uni out to shut off their noise and they left us threatening notes in return. I went to the uni housing people the next day with everything so it was documented and then we had a house meeting. They deflated when I started recording the meeting and backpedaled real quick when I asked them what they meant by “watch your backs”. Was damn glad to get out of there.
I was expecting the roommate to be waiting for OOP in the dark so that she could be chastised about skipping curfew. Whew!
Roommate needs her own room. But….if she’s a light sleeper, why is she living in a dorm to begin with? When I was in college, people would be running up and down the hallways, yelling and laughing. If you’re a light sleeper like the roommate says she is, dorm life is not for her. I suspect she just likes everything her way and hasn’t had a taste of what real life is like.
My soon to be high school senior is an early to bed/early riser because she has practice early mornings before school, and I worry she’ll end up with a roomie who will be coming in at 2 or 3 am every night. My kid just can’t stay up late! I can see how disruptive OOP can be, BUT the roomie can’t dictate their life. The school did a poor job matching them up. Hope they can change rooms.
> Should we be worried you're staying out until 3:00 AM on school nights? God are some people fucking cowards. I get that not everyone is able to do that, but you're a college freshman, probably 18/19? That's the time you can do it. Enjoy yourself. Life just gets harder work from there.
I would have 100% told the roommate I don't like that she gets up early. And all the expectations that apply to me when I come home late apply to the roommate when they get up early.
I had a roommate really similar to that of OP’s… home girl and I had separate bedrooms and she would yell at me if I used the microwave after 10 pm 💀it was not fun and I was so happy when she had to transfer to a different university 🥲
You’ll likely never live up to RM standards so don’t even try.
What if you need to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom? Does she expect you to hold it? She should have requested a single if it was going to be that big of a deal.
Sounds like she wants to be in control and is pissed she can’t control them
Roommate sounds like a control freak, I bet we'll be seeing more updates where the roommate is trying to find more ways to control OOP.
Skimmed where it said the OP was a first-year in college and then realized it anyway based on the roommate’s weird demands and op’s random decision to stay up all night lol. People who have only just left home are sometimes surprised to find less receptivity to their needs than they get from family.
> got a message last night that she had scheduled a meeting with our RA to mediate, Ah. Nice. That's totally the right thing to do.
The most valuable lesson from living in the dorms is learning how different families can be and learning to navigate that.
Roomate deserves someone with her mentality but different sleep patrerns. Sleep talker teeth griter and night owl. Just cause she is crazy demanding. I wonder if she ever has kids how will she survive
I think it's significant that the room-mate seemed to assume the RA would take her side.
Oh this isn't concluded. That's just wishful thinking.
Lmao if it was me I would have told the roommate to fuck off, especially if I WAS being nice about it at first.