Now that it's the middle of August and summer is slowly but surely winding down and all of the college kids are returning back to school, I keep reminiscing on my college days and how much fun I had. It's funny how often people told me to take advantage of that time because it would go by really fast and then you would be thrown into the real world where you are expected to be an adult and have a full time job that takes up all of your time and pay bills and buy groceries (not to mention pay back the thousands of dollars in student loans you acquired over the years). I remember smiling and nodding but thinking to myself "yeah yeah, I can't wait to be done with freaking school and be on my own". Good one Tarah, good one.
Now that I am considered an 'adult' and I have all of these responsibilities and crap to worry about, I am sure as heck missing those carefree days where my biggest worry was what time I was going to get out of class on Wednesday night because I needed to know if I was going to have enough time to get ready and go out for Whiskey Wednesday or if I just needed to find a house party to play beer pong until 3 am at. Let me just tell you that last night Vinnie and I went out and had 2 beers then we came home and got in bed to watch a movie. We were both passed out at 9:30 pm. In my college days, I had just started pre-gaming at 9:30 pm. Talk about lame adults up in this hiz-ouse.
Alright, alright you get it...I miss college and I've rambled on about it for far too long now. Anyways, one of the most nerve wrecking and scary parts about college for freshmen is finding out who your roommate(s) is/are. I've heard a ton of horror stories about freshmen roommates and I'm here today to tell you mine...
My freshmen year of college I decided to go to my community college because I received a full scholarship to play softball there. The community college was about a 30 minute drive from my hometown and tons (most) of the kids I graduated high school with were also going there because it was cheaper than a state school and close to home. I'm from a small town and most of us weren't really ready and/or prepared to move far away from mom and dad and the little town of 2,000 people where we knew everyone by first and last name. My parents told me that since I received a full scholarship and didn't have to pay for my first 2 years of school that I could live in the apartment/dorms that were located at my community college. I was super excited about this. My friend Abby (who was also playing on the softball team and lived in the small town next to my small town) was also living in the apartment/dorms so we decided we would live together. Since these apartments had 4 rooms and we didn't know anybody else who would be living there, we were assigned 2 random roommates. Our roommates were both completely different than us. We were 2 small town girls and they were both big city girls who were loud and obnoxious and a little intimidating to us. We ended up all getting along really well...for the first couple of months...
Yep that's me and my roommates. This night we were at 'war' with the boys who lived in the apartment above us. The most embarrassing thing about this picture is actually the caption that I decided to write for it "this is def the best pic of the roomies yet...we're ghetto for real". Seriously?! Ghetto. for. real. *shaking my head in shame*
Anyways, my roomie Jessica (name has been changed) was always getting in fights with us. She took 2 hour long showers and used up all of the hot water, she ate all of my eggos and pop tarts, she used the ice cube trays to make pickle popsicles, she got up at 3 am to cook 3 course meals of crab meat and fried chicken, she watched tv out in our living room with the volume all the way turned up at odd hours of the night, she had her friends come over for parties when some of us were trying to get a good night's rest because they had practice early the next morning, and the list continues. She was just difficult.
One day, at the end of the first semester of that freshman year, Jessica's mother decided to come visit her. She is from East St. Louis so it was about a 3 or 4 hour drive. Her mom also brought her little cousin who was probably about 5 years old. Her mom decided to stay in our apartment while she was visiting because she didn't want to pay for a hotel. We were kind of skeptical about this but figured it was only for a couple of days so it was fine. Well then her mom's car broke down and she didn't have money to fix it. What was supposed to be a couple of days turned into over a week. By the way, we all came to our own conclusion that her mother was either a drug dealer or a drug addict or both because she slept through the whole day (on our couch mind you) and then got up at around 6 or 7 pm and stayed up throughout the whole night. She was loud, she was obnoxious, she was on our phone (OUR PHONE) every 5 minutes, and she was even handing our number out to people because every time I answered our phone (that would usually ring at 2 am and then 3 am and then 4 am) they would ask for 'Ms. Harris' aka Jessica's mom. Our walls were also paper thin so every time the woman would start talking it felt like she was literally standing in the same room as you. Also, this was during finals week so none of us were getting sleep and none of us were really able to study in our own apartment.
After about a week and a half, right before Christmas break, me and the other 2 roommates decided to go to the management of the apartment building. We told them the whole story and they told us that Jessica was on some kind of a special payment plan but she actually hadn't paid a dime while she had been living there and they had been trying to contact her mom to let her know that Jessica would be evicted if she didn't start paying. Now that we told them about her mom living in our apartment that she hadn't even been paying for, they marched right up to our place, woke her ass up, and had a serious talk with her (we assume). We were all too scared to stay in our apartment so we locked the doors to our rooms and ran away for a couple of hours, hesitant to even come back there that night. When we got back that night, Jessica was packing all of her stuff and her mom was mumbling/shouting things about 'if they don't want you here...' and 'these rich bitches...' and 'they don't appreciate nothin...'. We later found out that management told Jessica and her mom that they were still willing to work with them on a payment plan but she would have to start paying something and that her mom had to stop living on our couch. Her mom overreacted and Jessica moved back to East St. Louis that very night. How they got there since her mom's car was broken down, we do not know. But we never saw Jessica again and she deleted us all from facebook and myspace and blamed us for getting her 'kicked out of school'.
So the 3 of us lived happily ever after...until we got a new roommate...
Have a great night kids. And if you're a freshman going to college where you're about to meet your random roommate for the very first time...good luck, hope that works out for you.
XO. Tarah
Linking up with Shanna for Random Wednesday!
Oh my gosh. What a horror story.
ReplyDeleteI lived with seven roommates at one point in University. It was great, until the landlord decided to take away our one common space (the basement) and put more rooms down there. That meant we ended up gaining even more roommates and all hell broke loss.
This one girl was sleeping around with a ton of people, including one of my friends, so I jokingly asked her why she was such a, well, you can fill in the blank.
She didn't like me asking that and that quickly ended that friendship.
People started stealing other peoples food, using their dishes, etc. It was chaos.
I had an amazing time with them before all that happened though!