First year, dorm. Second year, dorm. Third year, apartment with one guy. Fourth year, apartment with two different guys.
My first year roommate contacted me recently via facebook. It got me to thinking about something that happened that year.
He spent three years in that room. His brother spent the previous four in it. Just before his brother moved out, he hid a Cheryl Tiegs poster above one of the ceiling tiles. He told my roomie about it, and said, “On the day that you move out, I’ll tell you which tile it is.”
This frustrated my roomie greatly. He wanted that poster! I suggested that we check above every tile, but he didn’t want to.
Then one night his brother called him and asked him to buy him a bass drum pedal with his own money and ship it to him in Canada. This pissed my roomie off even more. What the hell has his brother ever done for him?
I suggested a trade. One bass drum pedal for one Cheryl Tiegs poster.
Within 15 minutes that poster was hanging over my desk.
I was on campus for four years. There didn’t seem to be much point to move off campus, which meant I’d have to walk further to get to anything.
Freshman: Shared a room in the freshman dorm. Roommate was OK, but we had different interests. However the rest of the guys on the dorm all got along well, and we used to have all-day bridge games and partying. It sounds nerdy, but remember, this was in 1970-71. Drinking was legal and you could go down to the Rathseklellar and get a beer any time you wanted. There was no reason to get drunk; it was considered an epic feat when someone drank a gallon of beer in an evening (since few people drank to get drunk back then).
Sophomore: Went into a suite with three other guys I knew from the floor. It was one of the newer dorms on campus.
Junior: Jackpot! My roommate got the lowest number in the room lottery. He happened to notice that there were rooms available on the floor we lived on as freshmen. There weren’t supposed to be: the school was just going coed, and the floor was supposed to be all women; they cleared out all the existing men. However, when they were done, they realized they needed space for men, too, and were planning to put freshmen men with the women. My roommate picked the biggest and best room on the floor, and we spent our junior year as the only upper class men on the coed floor.
Senior: my roommate moved off campus. I kept the room. I had a roommate, but he moved out and I spent the year with the room all to myself. I officially had a different roommate, but he lived elsewhere and I only listed him because he wanted to get the room the next year. The women on the floor vetted my choice, actually: they didn’t want a jerk to be moving in.
First two years I lived in a dorm with one roommate – same girl both years. We are still friends today.
Third year, I rented a house with two other girls. One was batshit and the other – an old friend from high school – is still a good friend of mine. I really liked that house, but the location was weird – it was a long walk back and forth to campus and was also uphill both ways.
Last year, I rented a basement apartment – the first floor was the landlord’s accounting firm and the second floor was another apartment. I think that was my favorite because the location was closer to campus and I had friends in neighboring houses/apartments, so it was like a party commune 24/7 for most of that school year, some of which I actually remember.
Dorm my first year – a suite w/ two rooms connected by a bath. Second year, two of my three suite mates and I got an apartment. Then I got married between my sophomore and junior years. We rented an apartment that was the second floor of a faculty member’s house.
I was in a dorm room my first year. It was a huge double room, like 15x15. My friend lived in a double in another dorm and it was like 5x10. Better yet, my roommate showed up the first day without any stuff to tell me about her wild adventures being kidnapped in Mexico or some shit, then never came back.
Dorm life wasn’t for me, tho. My dad decided it’d be cheaper to buy me a car than to pay for the dorm. Or my folks thought I was losing my marbles. So one day I came home from work in the summer to find a new Escort in the driveway and was told I wasn’t going back to the dorms. I didn’t argue. I lived at home until I was 25.
First two years I rented an apartment. My boyfriend moved in with me the second year, and we got married a year later and immediately bought a house, so the 3rd and 4th year we lived in our house.
I lived in apartments, much of the time in what are called ‘quads’, which is essentially 4 separate, secure rooms with a toilet, sharing a kitchen and shower between them. It was cheap; as Oregon at the time actually gave rebates back to people who rented, it was REALLY cheap.
FWIW, I had student loans, Pell grants and anything else short of an actual scholarship, and always worked at least one full-time job + work-study, and it still barely covered basic living expenses. Never could afford a car; a 50+ - pound bike was my only transportation for the six years I was in Eugene.
First two years I lived in a dorm with a roommate. But it was a “program house,” dedicated to international students (who made up about a third of the population). I got stuck in because there was a housing shortage that year, but I really enjoyed the experience and stuck around another year.
My last two years I lived in my fraternity house, first with a roommate, then by myself.
First two years of college, double-occupancy dorm room (different roommate for the 2nd year).
Next two years, I lived in a two bedroom apartment with 4 other guys- I was in the 2 person bedroom, 3 guys shared the other. That was cozy.
Final semester to finish my minor, I had a studio apartment all to myself. Now, that was livin’. From there I shared houses with people, but I never had another shared-bedroom roommate until I got married 9 years later.
All four years of college, I lived in the language dorm. I picked this not to speak my language all the time (IIRC, 3 of the 4 years, I was the only person who spoke my language) but because this was the only dorm on campus in which everyone lived one person to a room. That’s how I like to live.
Freshman year: Single dorm room.
Sophomore year: Shared dorm room on a freshman hall (I was a freshman advisor).
Junior year: Shared dorm room on an upperclassman hall.
Senior year, first term: Single dorm room on an upperclassman hall.
Senior year, second and third terms: Apartment off-campus.
Lived on campus all 4 years.
Freshman year - unnatural triple. One roommate I still talk to occasionally after 20 years, the other I don’t know what happened to her and I don’t really care
Sophomore year - double with a friend from HS
Junior - friend from HS dropped out so I ended up assigned to the single bedroom in a 3-person suite (2 bedrooms, study, living room, bathroom) but had it all to myself for first semester.
Senior - kept my single in the 3-person suite and only had one other suitemate - a very nice girl who ended up dating (and marrying) a friend of mine who pretty much lived with us all year.
Freshman year, I had two roommates. One was a nice guy that I continued to hang out with for the whole four years, the other was a total jerk.
Sophomore year, I was in a smaller room that was in the same building as the band room, which was my main extracurricular, and there was also a dining hall in the building. That was convenient. It was officially a double room, but I ended up having it to myself for half the year, when my roommate moved out and nobody else moved in.
Junior year, same room as sophomore, but by this point it’d been officially reclassified as a single.
Senior year, my university didn’t have enough space for everyone who wanted to live on campus, so they rented a whole building from from a neighboring all-women school. I was in one of those, which I had all to myself, and also had my own attached bathroom, apparently because it hadn’t even occurred to most folks to ask. Incidentally, living at an all-women college isn’t all that the jokes would make it out to be: The biggest benefits to me were that I qualified for the meal plan there (which was far cheaper than at my school), and that I could check out books from their library (which was smaller, but had a better science fiction section).
Neglected to add that summer between Freshman and Sophomore years, I stayed over for summer school. First session, I shared a 2-bedroom on-campus apartment with 2 other guys, but second session, I had it all to myself. That was kind of sweet.
Roommate #1: black girl who did NOT want to room with a white girl and made that well-known. She moved out in less than a month.
Roommate #2: really cool, I was going through a breakup and a basketcase and she was pretty patient with me. She left when a private room became available, I think.
Roommate #3: sorority sister. Rooming together ruined our friendship for years, but we reconciled later on.
Roommate #4: another sorority sister. We did fine together but both wanted private rooms.
After that, I got my private room. I shared a bathroom with a really cool, black graduate student (this will be relevant in a minute) - we’d lived on the same floor for a while so I already knew her. Up front she told me “ok, it’s like this. I have a thing about the bathroom being clean and I’m picky if you screw it up it’ll ruin our friendship. So how about you buy the cleaning supplies and I keep it clean the way I want it done and we both keep most of our shower stuff in our own rooms?” I agreed, and we never had any problems.
She’d ask me stuff about white people (“why do you white people gotta be FRIENDS after a breakup?”) and vice versa. Learned a lot from her.
College part II
This was at UMR in the very early 80’s. There was a huge influx of women wanting to study science & engineering so some of the formerly male dorms were reassigned as women’s dorms. There wasn’t enough space elsewhere and the new multi-story dorm being built wasn’t complete yet, so the university rented 5 or 6 complete motels along Martin Springs Drive (the old Route 66). It was a tough life with cable TV, a pool, and weekly maid service. Did one year in a normal motel room, the next in a room in a house belonging to the motel, then moved into an apartment with a couple friends.
Quarter 1- parent’s house.
Quarters 2-5: fraternity house
Quarters 7-11: dorms
Quarters 12-13: parent’s house
Quarter 14: apartment
Then back to parent’s for a year. Left home at 23 and have been on my own since then.
First year I lived in a single room in university accommodation - shared bathrooms and kitchens.
Next three years I rented various houses with up to four other students off campus.
This is very typical in the UK. There isn’t much room sharing going on.
