The issue being that the roommate (per the OP) feels that the only solution is to stick to his schedule.
If the OP has tried to cut down on the distraction (moving his monitor, playing with headphones, no voice chat, limiting duration of play, etc) and the RA feels that he’s being reasonable accommodating then it falls on the roommate to make the next step in effort if this still isn’t enough. Hanging some sort of curtain to block sound and light or some other barrier, a sound blocking sleep mask (if ear plugs don’t work), a white noise generator, whatever. Point being, the OP has equal rights to use the room and his life doesn’t need to be dictated by the roommate’s schedule. Should he show consideration? Sure, and he’s done that. Does he need to become a church mouse from 11pm onward on a weekend night? No, he doesn’t. He’s done his part so let the roommate take it from there.
If he was having three friends over and playing poker then I’d agree but that’s not what’s happening. I was responding more to the people who feel that “video games” is somehow a disqualifier from both parties having an obligation to work towards accommodating one another and compromising.
That fact that he’s playing video games is irrelevant. What it is is a basic question of conflicting personal schedules and how both parties can share the living space (as in, actually share it – not just kick one out whenever it’s inconvenient for the other).
We had strict rules in our dorms about noise and lights after hours. You wanted to watch TV/party/study/game you had to go do it one of the common rooms, not in the bedroom areas.
I think OP’s roommate is showing admirable restraint. Many people who were routinely being kept up in their bedroom all night, night after night, would resort to murder.
At my university, someone in the roommate’s position would have been told that they should apply for a dorm with special “quiet floors” with stricter afterhour rules. Those floors existed because those people were definitely not the norm and their expectations weren’t those of most students.
Given that the OP has already addressed this situation with his resident assistant and advisory group and they agree that he is being accommodating, I would guess that his situation is closer to mine than the strict rules that applied to your dorm.
I’m agreeing with you so much. What if the OP was wanting to study all night instead of gaming. I think that folks are condemning the OP because he wants to study during the day so he can stay up and game at night.
Personally, I think the OP has been more than reasonable as far as accommodating his or her roommate. They are both paying the same money for a bed in a small room. The roommate needs to work with him or move out.
I share a bed with a man who snores. I wear earplugs. My husband shares a bed with someone who likes to read at night. He bought me an e-reader that has a back light, and then when he learned that the light flash when I turned pages bothered him, he started wearing a sleep mask.
It takes both sides to compromise, the roommate doesn’t seem to be willing to budge while the OP has done everything he can. Drinking water too loud? Really?
Needing 13-14 hours a sleep daily is not normal for a healthy person. There’s room for some give and take if that’s not an exaggeration. On the other hand, it’s April. Stick it out and get a solo room or find another gamer roommate next time around.
Not sure if this has been tried or suggested, but you can try getting rubber O rings for the keyboard. I don’t think they’d help much if you have blue switches, but it’s better than nothing. I also feel that some mice are quieter than others, so that might be worth experimenting with. Obvious stuff like turning monitor brightness down, headphones and making sure your graphics card doesn’t sound like a jet engine in some games should also help. I also prefer earmuffs over plugs, but whatever.
I don’t know how the dorm building is set-up -
But how about buying a desk on wheels. If you remove the existing desk - would something like this fit? - $80 odd doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to allow both of you to co-exist. Especially to allow you to game at “odd” hours…
Or simply buying castors ($12 on Amazon, and easy to fit for even minimal carpentry skills) for your existing desk so that your whole set-up can be wheeled in and out of the room with minimal effort?
How far is the common room from your dorm room? Is it close enough for wireless to work? - A wireless adaptor is a rather small expense for room-mate peace.
Does your college have a free wifi network you can logon to?
Or possibly if the RA is closer to the common room (and internet is free in the dorm) can you put a wireless router in his / her room?
Finally - I got a free wireless dongle with my cell plan - I dunno if you have such an option, but it is always there that maybe for quite minimal expense (maybe $30 per month?) you can get a similar data only plan for use on the move so that you’re not tied to ethernet.
As an aside - it is totally unreasonable to expect to do anything other than read or sleep in a shared room after 12 midnight - at any time of the week.
It is also totally unreasonable to expect to have 14 hours a day of silence in a shared room.
OP, if your roommate had not said they wanted earplugs it’s rude of you to press earplugs on them regardless of how awesome a compromise you think earplugs are. It’s not comfortable to try to sleep in most earplugs, (hell, it’s no picnic to walk around a paper mill or a gun range in them while awake either) but more to the point, you’re telling someone else you don’t respect their personal agency. You don’t get to decide what’s best for your roommate to do w/ their body in order to get peace and quiet.
Your play schedule is out of sync with most people’s sleep cycles. You should probably get a laptop so you can play in some other place than the shared room. Even if you get a new roommate, there will likely be issues if you regularly play after midnight or all the way until morning. It’s not unreasonable to for him to expect that at least from 12-7 is quiet with no activity going on. That’s a pretty normal time to be sleeping. It’s one thing if you’re up late doing homework once in a while, but it’s excessive to regularly be up well past 12, especially if you’re gaming rather than doing homework.
And I agree about the mechanical keyboard. Get a silent one. Even if I was awake that would drive me crazy to hear that loud CLICK-CLICK-CLICK all the time.
Develop a snoring habit. He’ll beg you to be up till all hours gaming.
Ok, that’s not actually a serious suggestion. But what would a person who can’t bear his roommate even drinking water in ‘sleeping hours’ have done if he’d been assigned with a snorer?
He goes to sleep at 8 pm? He sleeps until 1 or 2 on the weekends? Those are not normal sleep hours for any adult, let alone one in college. If you’re such a light sleeper that you are awoken by your roommate opening the fridge to get a drink of water, and your sleep schedule is that strict, you have no business living in a college dorm. Did he actually expect that his roommate would be completely silent between the hours of 8 pm and 10 am every night? What if the OP had an early class, and had to get up at 7:00 am- would this guy object? What if he wanted to use his computer, say 10:00 am on a Saturday, when the roommate is sleeping- sounds like the roommate would have an issue with that, too. Yes, this guy has the right to a good night’s sleep, and the OP might be overestimating the value of his gaming time in comparison to his roommate’s sleep, but it sounds like the other guy isn’t exactly being reasonable. When I was in college, some nights I didn’t even get back from class until 8:00. Maintaining a regular sleep schedule is very important for maintaining health and mental functioning, but it’s not like this guy is sleep deprived. Getting a couple hours less sleep one or two nights a week should not impair him enough to have a significant effect on his grades. If it does, again, he should not be living in a college dorm.
I don’t have any good solutions for the OP, but I don’t think he’s entirely in the wrong here. It sounds like he’s made a genuine effort to find a solution. He has agreed to not game in the room on weeknights, and to not stay up until 7 or 8 on the weekends. He has bent over backwards to not offend the roommate by getting a drink of water at night. What else is he supposed to do? It sounds like this guy would be complaining even if the OP weren’t a gamer at all, just a guy who wanted to be able to live in his room past 8:00 pm.
The OP has a laptop, but it’s not specially set up for gaming the way his desktop computer is. He said his laptop is for basic use and only good for Flash types of games.
I don’t want to stay up all night every weekend. My suggested compromise was that I would continue to not use my desktop on the weekdays, and instead of shooting for a gaming session that ended at the crack of dawn, I would just cut it short to 3am on Friday and Saturday nights, and I guaranteed him Sunday through Thursday nights would be completely desktop free. I understand I’m asking him to give me 3 extra hours after he lies down, but also suggested he at least TRY the earplugs to see if they help even a little bit, but he refuses.
I’m not exaggerating his sleeping hours, and am looking for a compromise for the exact reason you stated. This is the real world with other people. I pay just as much as him to live in that room and have just as much as a right as him to tend to my business and affairs in it. And for that reason I don’t mind making sacrifices provided that he does the same. The moment I begin inconveniencing myself for him without him doing the same for me is the moment that his time in the room becomes more important than mine. Once again I don’t mind giving up 5 or 6 hours for my weekend gaming session, but he has all the trouble in the world giving me 3 extra hours period.
My gaming isint a priority in my life. I dedicate myself to my studies during the week without so much as even touching my desktop. And during the weekend like most other college students I enjoy time with my friends. Also you sound ridiculous claiming I have an addiction, if you’ve read one of my many posts you would know that I’m not fiending to game till 7 or 8 in the morning, and am unable to survive without doing so. My side of the compromise cuts my weekend time down significantly and that’s more than fine with me, my roomate is the only person who is not willing to meet me any kind of halfway
Is it possible that your roommate’s sleep has been affected on enough nights that he’s now unwilling to bend because he’s so annoyed by the whole subject? Don’t underestimate the ‘bitch eating crackers’ stage of relationships that comes after minor irritations rise to the level of barely-suppressed fury.
The issue isn’t that your roommate’s preferred sleep schedule or your preferred gaming hours are unreasonable in themselves, the issue is that your needs and preferences are so out of whack with one another. The question has been raised several times, but let me ask again: how much longer will you be roommates with this particular person, and what is your situation next year? Because if it’s a short time before you and your roommate part ways forever, the best answer is just to stick it out as gracefully as possible until you don’t have to share a room with one another anymore.
And for the future, put a great deal of effort into solving problems before they can exist by making sure that you are with someone as compatible as possible and working out possible compromises before they are urgently needed.
For now, it won’t hurt and could help you to apologize to your roommate for having disturbed his sleep in the past. That could go a long way to helping defuse the tension between you, which helps immeasurably in finding a solution that works for both of you. See if you can agree on core hours in which it is expected that the room will stay quiet. And see if there is a way for you to quietly use your gaming system without bothering him: I’m not a fan of earplugs myself, truth be told, so I can understand your roommate’s rejection of them, but maybe he could agree to try them out one night just to see how it goes. The white sound machine sounds like an idea worth trying out, and if it solves the issue, bonus points to both of you!
I would suggest that you drop the idea that you both need to give something up or the other side is being inherently unreasonable. Wants do not trump needs, and regular sleep is a need, even among college students.
It sounds to me like two people sharing a room for the first time in their lives.
My high school kids don’t go to bed until after ten, and then are awake by shortly after six and seven respectively on weekdays. At camp, my daughter’s lights out isn’t until 11 - she is a Counselor in Training and they work until 10pm, so 10-11 is the time for them to spend doing them things - she’s sixteen. Gaming for high school and college age kids happens in the middle of the night on weekends. Sharing a dorm room involves having your roommate up cramming a paper in at four in the morning, or having sex in the top bunk while you try and sleep in the bottom bunk…but in trade, it involves him having to put up with your mother tidying the room when she visits and your shoes smelling like something died in there.
My sister’s freshman roommate was from China - she never adjusted her sleep schedule in a year - had an alarm clock that screamed in Chinese to wake her up and cooked in the room - have you smelled authentic Chinese?
Personally, I think your RA is on the right track. As long as you keep it reasonable, which it sounds like you are doing, he needs to be reasonable. That may mean earplugs - it takes a while to get used to them, but your do. Or a sleep mask - it takes a while to get used to that, but you do get to use your own room for something other than sleeping. It isn’t a bedroom - its a dorm room - and its your space as much as it is his.
I’m only stuck with him for another month, and then next semester I’ll have my own room because I’ll be an RA actually, but the whole issue of “needs trumping wants” has already been proven to be a false in this case. The reason my RLC and RA are on my side and are in agreement a compromise should be made is because his time ISINT inherently more important than my time, and his sleeping schedule technically SHOULDN’T mandate me to do squat just as mine doesn’t mandate him to do squat. I’ve never asked him to do anything while I sleep. I fully expect him to do whaeit is he wants while I sleep, and if it were to be something that I found unbearable then as an EQUAL resident of the living space a compromise would have to be made. My time is no more invaluable than his and vice versa, and as such if he has to give up on something it’s only natural that I do as well. I could grit my teeth and ebdure it but I’m afraid to say that I won’t be doing so. There is a month of school left and i want to enjoy my weekends as much as he does. I’m going to schedule a meeting with us and our RA and see if maybe he can’t convince him to come to some sort of compromise, because if not I already know the verdict will be that I have every right to enjoy my weekend nights or any other time of the day in my room however I see fit so long as I’m doing all of the things I’ve done already. If he doesn’t want to compromise after all is said and done then I’m going to enjoy my 3am weekend compromise weather he likes it or not. His anger this close to the end of the year is irrelevant to me. I have tried and tried to get him to understand that an equal compromise is how things work in situations where each party is equally important. He is no more important than me simply because he would much rather sleep, yes that sounds inconsiderate but it’s still true none the less. I’m not asking anything of him I would not be able to do myself, or quite frankly of anyone else who would be in this position. I have friends just as he does and I want to enjoy their company on the weekends doing what we always do on the weekend just as he does as well, and if my self imposed gaming hour restrictions are still a source of frustration for him then there is nothing more I can do aside from offering him the earplugs hes never tried up to this point, one more time
I sympathize with the OP. Back in the day, I wanted to listen to records in my room while I studied. I used headphones, but my roommate complained that the sound of the needle going around on the vinyl was too loud for her to sleep. Some people just need things “just so” in their sleeping environment.
It would probably be a good idea to get gaming laptop then. If you’re that into games that you’re playing all night and you have roommates, a powerful laptop will make that much easier to accomplish.
Even if you get a new roommate next year, this will likely continue to be a problem. True, your current roommate has an excessive sleep cycle, but pretty much any other roommate is going to expect that night is generally for sleeping and not for gaming. A new roommate won’t solve this problem. A new laptop might.