Ouch. So close…and yet so screwed over. But I’m gonna stop posting to this thread now (and go to bed) because 1)you shouldn’t dwell on it and 2) it’s causing me to dwell on the time I was screwed over for on-campus housing, not by the lottery, but by my 3 closest friends (who obviously turned out not to be such great friends).
Yeah, I get it. This is the Pit, you should be able to rant about things and be angry - it’s better than taking it out on people around you in person.
I do hope that waiting list comes through for you.
Ava
People suggesting MOL move off campus must not be familiar with Bay Area housing. I attended university not far from Palo Alto and it was fucking insane. A 1-bedroom apartment was minimum $1500/month. And this is in a nice suburban town, not downtown San Francisco or Manhattan. Obviously this was way out of the league of your average impoverished student, so we were left scrambling for shared housing and renting rooms. It was very difficult - it took me a month of hunting to find a place to live my senior year. Living on campus can suck, but at least it’s there.
Good luck, MOL. Although you could tone it down on how much you hate everyone, I understand how frustrating university living situations can be.
Here at Penn State, our lottery is similarly random. I can’t be certain, but some people’s posts have led me to conclude that everyone might not grasp the concept that grade level doesn’t matter. A freshman has the same likelihood of a getting a single room on our campus as does a senior, provided they both enter the lottery for a single room. If her lottery works the way I think it does, MeanOldLady could be the only senior on campus and still get screwed if that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
That said, I seriously feel for you. I don’t have a problem getting along with people, or spending time with people all day, but I have some set-in-stone habits. I need the room pitch dark when I sleep, and most people find the music I like repugnant. I entered the on-campus lottery for the first time this spring, and I’ll be living with a stranger for the first time as a senior in college. Here’s hoping I don’t get someone who stays up all night! Good luck to you, to me, and to everyone else who’s waiting. (At least you already know! PSU won’t tell me where I live or in what kind or in what kind of room until late July!)
-M
Heh, this reminds me of a tactic a co-worker used to use when random people would hassle her on the street or public transportation. She’d turn to them with a perfectly straight face and say “Excuse me, but have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart? Let me tell you how he died so that we might truly love one another!”
You have never seen people leave someone so the hell alone. You might want to try it with your roommates. They may try to get rooms away from YOU!
There’s just one part of this I’m confused about. When I was in college, we really only used the roommate assignment system freshman year- after that, we had made friends and requested who we wanted to live with. Are you not able to request specific roommates? My experience was that once I’d found compatible roommates, dorm life ended up being fairly tolerable.
Yes, we can request who we want to live with, but I planned on living alone (like I said). The pure eeeeevil that is the housing draw crushed my dream. Even people who request to live together can be broken up if they get really crappy number.
Oh, and a big fat thankies to all the people who are wishing me luck with my reassignment deal. I’ll need it. ::crosses fingers::
When I went off to college, I dropped out of classes in the middle of my second semester. I reregistered the next year, but because the school had a minimum requirement of one year of dorm living, I had to find housing. Except that it was already after all the dorms had filled up and I was really left being dropped into whatever situation was missing one person (i.e. somebody got a single room when they weren’t supposed to or something like that).
I thought I had gotten lucky when they put me in a campus apartment, but that notion soon vanished. There were three people living there, two bedrooms, and the three had shared the apartment the year before. Two girls were already in the other bedroom when I moved in, so I just had to throw all my stuff on the top bunk and wait for my new bedroom-mate to arrive. Her name was Veera. I will never forget her name because she’s now on my list of people not worth knowing.
Veera arrived with her parents, quickly summed up the living arrangements, and proceeded to throw the biggest hissy fit I have seen before or since. Screaming, crying, throwing things, basically shouting a “why me” sentiment to everyone within the complex. Her continual anguish was “I wanted to live alone!” Her parents sort of tried to calm her down and gave me apologetic smiles, but I was appalled. I was supposed to sleep in the same tiny bedroom as this person? It’s not like I wanted to be in there either.
Eventually Veera’s parents got her out of the apartment for a while and I packed up everything I could as quickly as I could and got the hell out. The other two girls apologized to me and said she was high-strung but would calm down eventually. Nothin’ doin’, I thought, I knew when I wasn’t wanted. I went to my boyfriend’s place to stay there for a few days, but I couldn’t get everything out of the apartment, and I was afraid to go back. I left my grandma’s quilt on the top bunk, a bunch of shoes in the closet, and most of my music tapes spread out on the bed. A couple of weeks later I went back to get them, and luckily Veera was not there. The housing people, however, basically told me “tough shit” and gave me a list of people who were also missing a roommate. For the next few weeks I had to knock on doors, face the people inside, and say “can I live here?” Mostly they said no, and although I technically had the right to move in anyway, I wasn’t about to go where I wasn’t wanted again.
Eventually I found a nice person and I moved into a dorm room. But I didn’t stay there much (was with the boyfriend mostly) because I think I was still shocked at the whole thing and very much afraid that my mere presence was going to send somebody into a rage. I felt really unwanted, and the university did nothing to help.
The reason I’m telling you this? Suck up the living situation if you have to, and be nice to your roommates. You may think you got screwed, but I bet they don’t like it either. Your rage, should it manifest itself elsewhere besides a message board, really can make those around you feel like shit. Good luck.
Alma, you wrote that 20 page dissertation to tell me to be nice to my roommates? Did I ever say I was NOT going to be? If so, I’d like ya to point it out. I said I was ever so pissed about being fucked in the ass by the housing lottery again. I guess it’s a crime to get mad when shitty shit happens, eh?
Count me in as one who has sympathy for you, though I agree that your OP was a teensy bit over the to and needed to have some clarification (that you later supplied), was misleading at first and probably led to the flaming. Yuick, I’d hate living in such close quarters, even with people I liked!!!
But then I’ve seen other posts of yours and knew that this wasn’t your usual MO.
What surprised me was that I didn’t realize you were a young college student (I guess I’ve missed where you talked about that). I’d taken the “OLD” part of the Meanoldlady to mean that you were probably around my age or more.
I like giving people the impression that I’m some cranky spinster in a house full of cats. I’m only cranky sometimes, am 20 and absolutely hate cats. I just get such a kick out thinking people are picturing me as a grey haired hag who shakes her cane at insolent whippersnappers.
I’m probably not the first who mentally pictures you sitting on a porch in a rocking chair, next to CrankyAsAnOldMan and CrazyCatLady.
FTR: Cranky is a woman, and if I’m correct, CCL is not an old lady either.
LOL, at any rate, I think some of the people giving MOL such a hard time, either had never read any of her posts before, or were just flaming for flaming’s sake.
As I said, it didn’t seem to be her usual MO, so I’m surprised people were so willing to assign labels to her from just one thread.
I’ve seen several people do that to other posters too. People who’ve been posting for ages, and even started a thread or two, and then they post a pit, and maybe it’s posted in the heat of the moment, and not entirely well thought out (gee, imagine the “irony” of those two things going together?), and suddenly posters are coming out of the woodwork condemning them for that ONE post as if that’s ALL that they were about.
Geez, some really unobservant posters. Either that, or ones with really bad memories 
.
Y’know they say that if you make it look like an accident you’ll automatically get a 4.0…
Just worth bearing in mind if you really hate people 'n all that 
Ha! I ain’t killin’ nobody! 
Canvas, I’ve noticed the same thing 'round here. Funny how that works.
I sympathize with MeanOld Lady. I don’t mind people so much, but I despise living with strangers, and while I haven’t exactly had a “bad roomate”, it still wasn’t really that fun. I just didn’t really feel comfortable, and I felt like that all the time.
As much as I think MeanOldLady complains way too much about things in general and I’m tired of reading her flames…
I have to sympathize. I lived with with roommates in a tiny cardboard box at college for three years and it SUCKED. SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED.
I am not particularly misanthropic, I get along with my housemates very well, but college living was hell. For all of you who have pointed out that it will suck for her roommates too… DUH. It sucks all around.
Ya know folks, just to give MOL the benefit of the doubt for a minute…
I really, really LIKE most people. I think they’re swell. I want to make a career of working with and helping people.
That being said, if I had to share my ROOM - not an apartment, a ROOM with 2 other people, I would go stir crazy in about 2.34 seconds.
I think it would suck dripping, syphaletic wang in a deep, meaningful way.
Ease up on MOL - I think she’s stuck in a crap situation.
That being said - MOL - yer gonna have to suck it up - look at this as a character building experience.
Am I the only one who is having trouble sympathizing with a Stanford student that can’t afford rent? It’s, what, $35k a year now?
As someone pointed out earlier, you don’t have to live in Palo Alto. Heck, when I went to UCSC, someone commuted from SF! It doesn’t appear to me that you have accepted the possibility of living in a nearby town. Heck, you could live in Western Addition for pretty cheap and take CalTrain.
God, I hate Stanford. Go Bears!