What to do if you find yourself holed up with a psychopath
Every college student's nightmare: moving into a dorm room in the fall to find a binge-drinking slob with a pathological addiction to the giant sugar cookies created by JHU Dining and an enthusiastic disinclination to showering, ever. There are variations on the stereotypical "bad roommate": the sadist who sleeps with a knife under his pillow, the sexiler who sleeps with his girlfriend every night, the study nerd who sleeps with his computer. And so on.
Living with someone is never easy all of the time, and while most roommates fall somewhere comfortably between the lines of "surrogate spouse" and "occasional devilspawn," knowing some ways to ease domestic tension is a good place to start.
The tools for success
The Office of Residential Life (Res Life) distributes leaflets in each dorm room entitled "The Roommate Bill of Rights" and "General Principles for Resolution of Roommate Conflict" and encourages each resident to discuss these helpful hints and rules with his roommate.
Res Life's handouts are more or less a compilation of various examples of common sense. For example, just because you never sleep at a decent hour doesn't mean you should reap whatever misery you induce from being awake on your roommate, who goes to bed promptly at 10:30 every night. This is common sense and basic decency.
Therefore there is only one thing you need to understand, in its entirety, in order to get along with your roommate in any situation: his or her [insert seemingly irrational/annoying/ridiculous behavior] is normal, somewhere. Sometimes this is called having empathy.
Knowing this, you can chalk up your differences to sociopolitical disparities - however absurd - and relax in the shadow of the resulting wonky psychological forces at work on your roommate.
Effective communication
The Res Life web site notes, "Direct communication is effective communication. No two people are alike! Talk about your differences, and work at understanding and compromising with each other."
Living with someone is never easy all of the time, and while most roommates fall somewhere comfortably between the lines of "surrogate spouse" and "occasional devilspawn," knowing some ways to ease domestic tension is a good place to start.
The tools for success
The Office of Residential Life (Res Life) distributes leaflets in each dorm room entitled "The Roommate Bill of Rights" and "General Principles for Resolution of Roommate Conflict" and encourages each resident to discuss these helpful hints and rules with his roommate.
Res Life's handouts are more or less a compilation of various examples of common sense. For example, just because you never sleep at a decent hour doesn't mean you should reap whatever misery you induce from being awake on your roommate, who goes to bed promptly at 10:30 every night. This is common sense and basic decency.
Therefore there is only one thing you need to understand, in its entirety, in order to get along with your roommate in any situation: his or her [insert seemingly irrational/annoying/ridiculous behavior] is normal, somewhere. Sometimes this is called having empathy.
Knowing this, you can chalk up your differences to sociopolitical disparities - however absurd - and relax in the shadow of the resulting wonky psychological forces at work on your roommate.
Effective communication
The Res Life web site notes, "Direct communication is effective communication. No two people are alike! Talk about your differences, and work at understanding and compromising with each other."
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
Heba
posted 10/11/07 @ 8:57 AM EST
I am the author's roommate.
Gary Freedman
posted 7/20/08 @ 2:38 PM EST
I had a roommate with a narcissistic personality disorder, I think. He had two girlfriends--an on-campus girlfriend and an at-home girlfriend. Neither knew about each other, of course. (Continued…)
Gary Freedman
posted 7/20/08 @ 3:00 PM EST
I had a college dorm roommate with a narcissistic personality disorder, I think. He had two girlfriends--an on-campus girlfriend and an at-home girlfriend. (Continued…)
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