In recent weeks there has been a quiz circulating my news feed on Facebook. Though it was often taken by several “Facebook—but not in real life—friends,” as I like to call them, it nonetheless caught my attention. It claims to match you with the perfect roommate by selecting from a group of your online friends — “you should move in with [insert name here,]” it says.
I laughed. This cannot be serious.
But then it caught speed, and soon enough the quiz reappeared with every dramatic scroll of my finger on the iPad. I promptly decided no Facebook quiz could analyze and measure the strange, kinetic bond in a roommate kinship like mine.
It began when I saw a girl I didn’t recognize walk into the Architecture School carrying a Nalgene with a Theta sticker during my second year. I immediately called her out for being a phony. I had never seen her at chapter before and was aggressively curious as to who she was. She quickly explained she was a transfer student. We immediately became best friends and have lived together for the past two years.
This year we upgraded from top bunk beds in a room of four girls to a more spacious apartment. She needed a guardrail and, though we poked fun, it later proved to be helpful in the way of safety. Our couch is Mecca for senseless ramblings and approximately seven blankets — we both love blankets. Most recently, we’ve been discussing plans to adopt a cat and build a pet an appropriately-sized replica of Mies Van Der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. And right now, she’s on Tinder rating catch phrases. Thus, things get wonderfully weird.
Finding someone who I could not only live with, but who also someone is as wild as I am, was a miracle. Eureka! This combination can be lethal, but when it works, it’s like, “Whoa, I wish you were in my bloodline. Or we could be in a coven together.”
So when I came across this quiz, I was 100 percent confident I already had the perfect roommate. I’m lucky, of course, because this is not always the case in matters of housing in college.
I’ve found it takes constant effort and self-evaluation to live with someone and actually be close, but the key is to keep roommate “maintenance” to the minimum. That is, when effort becomes exhausting, small apartments are suffocated with tension — so having your best friends in such close quarters doesn’t always work. That’s why, when it does, you should hold onto those friends.
There is nothing better than coming home to someone every afternoon with the expectation that she will, for whatever reason, be interested in the happenings of your extremely ordinary day. And if for some reason anything unordinary happens—say, drunk ice-skating or late-night Gus Burger-induced gluten relapses—my roommate is always enthusiastic as she listens to my nonsense and reciprocates with her own elaborate stories.
In reflecting on our good and bad experiences together, I’ve learned the perfect roommate for me is laid-back, weird, mildly tidy and appreciates the genuine happiness that food brings. No need for a quiz to remind me I made a spot-on decision when I signed my lease.
Allie’s column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at a.lank@cavalierdaily.com.
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