When you live in a tiny box — aka a dorm room — with another human being, things can get dicey.
If your roommate happens to be a grade A butt-wipe, then it can be extremely difficult to end your beloved year together on a good note.
That being said, here is some advice to help soothe the unquenchable loathing burning in your soul so that you can be a good roommate:
1. Don’t Get Mad
Like, don’t ever, ever get mad or show any emotions period. Your roommate can never know how you truly feel or that you have something as asinine as feelings. Don’t do it.
When she clips her toenails in the common area and leaves them on the ground for you to step on in the morning, don’t get mad.
When she eats your chips and leaves the bag open so that they can get stale, stay happy.
If she borrows something of yours and never gives it back because she’s an entitled prick, just be cool.
You don’t have feeling because you are a robot. Beep, bop, boop.
2. Be a Sponge
You have to sit there and listen to every story she tells you, no matter how little you care.
Absorb all the uncalled-for information about her romantic exploits and troubles in class. Ask questions so the roommate can believe you’re interested, even when your face states that you clearly aren’t.
3. Or, Become Deaf
As a deaf individual, you no longer have to listen to her incessant yapping or shit music that she refuses to turn down once you enter the room.
You won’t be awaken at 5 in the morning as she drunkenly tries to unlock the door. You also won’t be awake at 8 a.m. even though your first class isn’t until 12 p.m., because your roommate likes to slam things, as she gets ready in the morning.
Sure, you may not be able to ever hear the birds chirp again, but it’s totally worth not having to listen to your roommate eat her food. The cohabiter was obviously raised in a place where they don’t believe in chewing with their mouth closed, or not being an asshole.
4. Don’t Tell Them Anything About Your Life
Frankly, you shouldn’t burden your roommate with the troubles of your life — how dare you.
Your roommate should not have to listen to you ramble on about this and that, even though you’ve done that for her. Shame on you for trying to have an actual communal conversation with your roommate.
5. Be Immune to Temperature
When you are immune to the temperature of the room, the roommate can place the thermostat wherever she pleases. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.
The roomie can ignore your input and make the room a sauna or frozen tundra if she so desires. You can live your life without feeling the two extremes your room seems to abide in.
6. Don’t Have Friends
Bringing people into the room is inconvenient for the roomie. Once you bring in outside people, the roommate will be forced to sit up from her crumb covered sheets and be polite.
She shouldn’t have to go through that, and it isn’t right for you to hope she is polite to your friends. Who do you think you are?
7. Everything You Own Belongs to Them
Dorm rooms are a communal setting, which means everything you own is not only yours.
Your belongings are liable to free use by your roommate and you have to be okay with that. Your possessions are up for grabs, her items are not.
8. You Must Complete Every Fatuous Request
Even if you don’t want to lend her your favorite baseball tee or let her hang up yet another tapestry, just go with the flow.
When she asks if you can cornrow her hair, don’t look at her aghast, mind-tingling with the audacity of such a question—braid her hair. One more white girl appropriating other cultures won’t hurt anyone right?
9. Somehow Nullify Your Sense of Smell
I don’t know how this would be possible in any way other than sniffing a bunch of noxious chemicals, but you gotta do it.
It’s beyond rude of you to acknowledge any strange scents that may or may not have arisen from your roommate’s butt or crusty toes.
If you spray the room with air freshener in front of her, you will kill her very fragile self-esteem. At that point, you won’t be able to Febreeze away her damaged ego.
10. Accept That You Will do All the Cleaning
In the beginning of your year together, she was much more helpful in the cleaning category because she was trying to impress you with her “cleaning” skills.
Now that you are “friends,” she no longer feels the need to show-off. All the grunt work will be left for you because you are her maid.
Not only do you have to pick up any messes you make, but you also have to clean up hers. It’s only fair.
11. Don’t Resent Their Existence
It would have been nice to have another roommate who’s very being doesn’t irritate you to the core, but sometime life doesn’t work out like that. Accept the fact that she is an asshole and never go to your room. Ever.
It is better for you to sleep on the streets than ruin your roommate’s mood with all that angsty tension. Everything is about her and you must keep her happy.
If she wants you to freeze to death, so be it.
If she wants to steal all of your cereal bars and be rude to your friends, let it go.
If she is one of the worst people you have ever come into contact with, accept the fact that the universe is trying to make you a better person.
This is the only way to be a good roommate. The only way to verify your existence. It is the only way to be. Or, you could just put Nair in her shampoo.
