Living In Sync First Episode : Tell about your crazy roomie story

Hi guys! I’m Ahyeong Jeong, one of the hosts of Living in sync. I’m sure any UConn student has lived with a roommate at least once. Today’s living in sync is going to shed some light on episodes related to that roommate! We’ll give you lots of tips on what conflicts usually happen with your roommate and how to resolve them, so come on in quickly
Oh! Please bring your special roommate’s story, too 🙂

Links to indi­vid­ual research on dis­cussed topics:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7812804/

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/education/25roomscience‑t.html

 

Tran­script

Ahyeong: I’m an exchange stu­dent for the first time in this semes­ter, and I’m shar­ing a dou­ble room in east cam­pus with an Amer­i­can room­mate. How­ev­er, the room­mate hung up the phone to loud­ly in the room. I asked her if she could hang up the phone in the lounge. How­ev­er, she said it was a chal­lenge, so we decid­ed to hang up the phone in the room until 09:00. Also, bring­ing a friend to sleep in the dorm is a penal­ty in my coun­try, but it is com­mon here, and I was stressed out because she enjoys it. Final­ly, we have estab­lished rules now, but in this process, we talked about these issues with our RA, but I got into trou­ble with set­ting the num­ber of days I could bring my friends and sleep over. I orig­i­nal­ly did­n’t like bring­ing the friends over for a day and putting them in the dorm, but I gave way and said three. But my room­mate insist­ed on num­ber five. And when I said no, Ra said num­ber four. So I said, okay, but my room­mate laughed at me there. In that moment, I was annoyed, and tears burst. In the end, it end­ed well by agree­ing with each oth­er, but it was an expe­ri­ence that cul­mi­nat­ed in the sad­ness and dif­fi­cul­ty of liv­ing far away.

Eri­ca: Wow. So what is up, you guys? And wel­come to liv­ing in sync. Our names are Eri­ca, Desir­ae, Ahyeong, and we also have our friend Jovi, who’s gonna be join­ing and chim­ing in a lit­tle bit. So, as you heard already in this episode, we’re going to be talk­ing about room­mate issues, find­ing a good room­mate, and restor­ing a bro­ken room­mate rela­tion­ship. Just to kind of clar­i­fy. So you want­ed to bring your friend over for.

Ahyeong: Oh, no. She want­ed to bring her friend over for five days. Yeah.

Eri­ca: That’s a lot of days. And you told her to do it for three days, and then the RA kind of helped you guys set­tle it for four days. M. Okay, cool. So now we’re gonna have our friend Jovi chime in with some expert, infor­ma­tion and facts, and then we can go from there.

Jovi: Hi, my name is Jovi Yovanovitch. I’m a senior here at UConn, and I’ve lived on cam­pus for all four years. I’ve lived with a total of four dif­fer­ent room­mates, so I know first­hand how dif­fi­cult it can be to jug­gle those kinds of rela­tion­ships. Room­mate rela­tion­ships are so impor­tant because you not only spend so much time with a per­son, but you also have to share your per­son­al space with them. I know it took a minute to get used to shar­ing my bath­room, clos­et and all the oth­er things with anoth­er per­son. A, study done at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty found that 5.6 of under­grad­u­ate stu­dents report­ed hav­ing room­mate dif­fi­cul­ties and that those dif­fi­cul­ties hin­dered their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. The study also found that out of 416 stu­dents sur­veyed in a res­i­dent hall, fre­quent con­flict with one’s room­mate was a sig­nif­i­cant pre­dic­tor for the over­all stress lev­els of the stu­dents. 41% of Amer­i­cans aged 18 to 24 are cur­rent­ly enrolled in under­grad pro­grams across the coun­try. Of the ones liv­ing in cam­pus storms or in apart­ments or hous­es near cam­pus, 50.1% of women and 44.1% of men report­ed fre­quent or occa­sion­al con­flict with room­mate or their house­mates. Anoth­er study in, the Jour­nal of Sci­ence of the Total Envi­ron­ment from the Feb­ru­ary 2020 vol­ume found that 68.49% of stu­dents expe­ri­ence sleep depri­va­tion and that their over­all deep or rem sleep time decreased. Indoor noise was the most influ­en­tial fac­tor affect­ing the sleep among col­lege stu­dents, and they found that biggest thing affect­ing those sound lev­els was back­ground noise in their room, such as their room­mate stay­ing up late to study, their room­mate talk­ing on the phone, and just oth­er things that come with liv­ing with anoth­er per­son. I know when I had room­mates that weren’t the best, it def­i­nite­ly took a hit on my grades, my sleep, my mood, my anx­i­ety lev­els, and it’s some­thing that is real­ly affect­ing stu­dents of all ages on all campuses.

Desir­ae: Thanks, Jovi, for all those statistics.

We have some advice for incoming freshmen on how to deal with roommates

Now we’re going to move on to our advice for fresh­men, since a bunch of us are most­ly almost done with our col­lege expe­ri­ences. I’m a senior right now.

Eri­ca: Eri­ca, you’re a, a senior as well?

Ahyeong: I’m a junior.

Desir­ae: You’re almost there. Ayoung. So we’ll start off with, what is some­thing you want your fresh­man self to know as some­body, com­ing into UConn and liv­ing on campus?

Ahyeong: I think they should have known that we can write down the husky agree­ment on the dorm and make some rules.

Eri­ca: so my expe­ri­ence is a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent because I went to university

00:05:00

Eri­ca: my fresh­man and sopho­more year at a dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ty, and I always had a sin­gle, but we def­i­nite­ly still had to share, like a kitchen and a bath­room and stuff. and so I think just going off of just shar­ing any space in gen­er­al, def­i­nite­ly open com­mu­ni­ca­tion. how­ev­er, when I moved to, when I trans­ferred to UConn, actu­al­ly, I, did have a room­mate liv­ing in an off cam­pus apart­ment, and she’s actu­al­ly a. She was a lot old­er than I am, so I assumed that our room­mate part­ner­ship would be a lit­tle bit eas­i­er because of the age dif­fer­ence, because she was in her upper twen­ties, like, she’s, like, past her PhD, and I’m still, like, I was a junior at the time. So I’m think­ing, okay, it’s gonna be real­ly easy to work with her, but it was­n’t as easy as I thought. And so I. I wish we actu­al­ly sat down and, like, talked about, like, room­mate agree­ments and stuff, because we end­ed up hav­ing issues down the line. and so I’d say, like, no mat­ter what, you know, year, you are def­i­nite­ly, like, you know, when you first come togeth­er with your room­mate, hav­ing, like, a good con­ver­sa­tion and hav­ing, like, a group, a room­mate agree­ment about some­thing and, you know, just clar­i­fy­ing some­thing. and so I took that expe­ri­ence when I moved to my cur­rent off cam­pus hous­ing for my final year. I, was the one that took the ini­tia­tive and wrote a whole agree­ment. Like, I wrote a whole con­tract for all my two room­mates. We sat down, we talked about it. We actu­al­ly have a room­mate meet­ing tonight because there are already some things I’m notic­ing in the house, and I’m like, rather than. Cause some­thing I used to do is I’d keep it to myself and it would kind of, like, bub­ble up inside of me. Like, when I kind of noticed ten­den­cies about the room­mate that I did­n’t like, rather than, you know, just let­ting them know and being hon­est, I kind of kept it to myself and kind of brushed it off, but then even­tu­al­ly became real­ly annoy­ing to the point where, like, now they’re very present. It’s like, you’re just an annoy­ing per­son, which obvi­ous­ly isn’t the case, rather than if I had just told them, like, hey, maybe there’s some things that you’ve been doing, you know, that could, you know, have been a lit­tle bit annoy­ing to me or not. Right. As a room­mate. So I think that, you know, one thing that I have been want­i­ng to imple­ment mov­ing for­ward, which is why we’re hav­ing our meet­ing tonight, is just telling them, hav­ing every­one talk about how they feel so far. Cause it’s been a month liv­ing in and togeth­er, and just kind of like, talk­ing about their expe­ri­ences and what we wan­na do bet­ter mov­ing for­ward, just so we don’t step on one anoth­er’s toes and stuff. So, yeah, def­i­nite­ly open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, hav­ing a meet­ing, hav­ing some form of agree­ment, like Ahyeong said. And, yeah, over to you, Desirae.

Desir­ae: So I guess the main thing that we kin­da all agree on is we need to set bound­aries way ahead of time before any issues can come up. for my fresh­man year, I was lucky. My room­mate was an angel. Her name was Eve­lyn. I still think about her to this day.

Eri­ca: Are you guys friends?

Desir­ae: no, I don’t talk to her. No. But you know why I loved her? Cause she nev­er spoke to me. Oh, Eve­lyn was an angel because we were like, have you ever seen, like, those fun­ny memes where capy­bara is by a giant ass, giant croc­o­dile and the croc­o­dile’s not eat­ing it or any­thing? That was me and her. We were two beings that exist­ed in the same space, and we just let each oth­er be because, well, when we first met up, this was a fresh­man year, so we did do the husky room­mate agree­ment. We’re both intro­verts. We did­n’t real­ly need to talk about stuff because we did­n’t have any issues. And with the husky room­mate agree­ment, there’s a sec­tion where it’s, like, any spe­cif­ic rules you want to set down, it’s a, Like, you write it out, and me and her look at each oth­er, and we’re sit­ting there for ten min­utes. I was like, oh, I got one. No drugs. And she was like, great. That’s great. The most basic one. But we agreed on it. And for the rest of the semes­ter, we would hard­ly ever talk to each oth­er. She was also hard­ly ever there, but that’s what I liked about her. I still think about you today, Eve­lyn. You’re such a great room­mate. and, yeah, it’s just like. It’s also about a thing, about per­son­al­i­ties clash­ing a lot because some­one could be a good friend, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good room­mate. I’ve learned this over the years. I live off cam­pus now. I com­mute. But last year, junior year, I lived up in Gar­ri­gus, those Gar­ri­gus suites. I’m not sure if you’ve seen them, but how the suites work at UConn is that there’s three peo­ple to a room, and there’s a shared bath­room and then anoth­er room with three peo­ple. So it’s six peo­ple. Six peo­ple is a lot, espe­cial­ly if it’s women. Women. You would think that they would be clean. They’re not. I agree on PSA for any female lis­ten­ers. If you are shed­ding your hair, it hap­pens to all of us. if your hair is on the ground, please clean it up. I walked into a friend’s dorm one time, and it was like, I thought it was carpet.

Eri­ca: Oh, my gosh. Hair galore.

Desir­ae: Yeah, it was. But any­way, this suite, the main thing about it was that the bath­rooms, like I was say­ing, you have to set bound­aries with bath­rooms, espe­cial­ly if it’s shared among six women. And half the time, you’re only see­ing, like, two oth­ers. Just your suite, your roommates.

One thing I’ve learned about dorm life is that personalities do matter

what oth­er parts about the UConn dorm life exact­ly stood out to you or kind of makes you not gri­mace, but kind of, like, wish you knew more about beforehand.

Eri­ca: so for me, my per­spec­tive is always going to be dif­fer­ent, because, again, I did my first two years in upstate New York, and then when I moved to UCONN, I have lived. UCONN nev­er gave me hous­ing, so I’ve always lived off cam­pus. Junior year, I’m liv­ing off cam­pus again senior year.

00:10:00

Eri­ca: but I think, yeah, to that ques­tion, I think one thing I’ve learned and real­ized is that per­son­al­i­ties def­i­nite­ly do mat­ter, because for me, I’m def­i­nite­ly extreme­ly extro­vert­ed. Like, I love to talk to peo­ple. I love meet­ing peo­ple from all walks of life. And the room­mate sit­u­a­tion that I had last year was, like, she was also extro­vert­ed, but she want­ed a room­mate that she can talk to every day. And as an extro­vert, I have my times when it’s like, when I get home at 09:00 p.m. I’m not mad at you, girl. I have noth­ing to say to you. I just want to go to my room, get my din­ner, and just go, you know?

Desir­ae: Hey. Hi.

Eri­ca: How you doing? Cool. But she was like, she wants to have a full blown con­ver­sa­tion and talk about our life and days, and I’m just not that type of per­son. Like, because I’m so extro­vert­ed. Like, I def­i­nite­ly do have moments where my social bat­tery runs out, and I just want to be by myself. And also, I feel like, as a col­lege stu­dent, like, just, real­iz­ing that, you know, times are going to get busy, and just because I’m not speak­ing to you for five min­utes every day does not mean I’m mad at you or that we have a prob­lem. But she had a prob­lem with that because she want­ed some­one she can talk to every day. And so that also kind of, like, brought a wedge because she’d be talk­ing, I would­n’t real­ly give her ener­gy. And so it seemed like I was being rude even though I was­n’t. So I think even just com­mu­ni­ca­tion is impor­tant. But even spec­i­fy­ing, like, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and under­stand­ing and let­ting your room­mate know your exact per­son­al­i­ty, like, hey, yes, I’m an extro­vert, but there might be times when I’m going to come in, and all I’m going to say to you is, hi. Hel­lo. And it does­n’t mean I’m annoyed. It does­n’t mean I’m mad. It does­n’t mean I’m being rude. It just means that, hi. Hel­lo. I just want to be alone, and don’t take offense to that, you know? so, yeah, so maybe ayo and you can kind of add the per­spec­tive about the UCONN room­mate, in my opinion.

Ahyeong: I also agree with that, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with me and my room­mate. Just sim­ple is the best, because I think when I go to my dorm, I just want to take a rest and just sleep. And also, my room­mate is always just spend her time on her bed. So we just check our con­di­tion each oth­er and just, hey, how are you? Like dad? Yeah. I think it is just nor­mal talk about only the sim­ple thing every day.

Eri­ca: Yeah.

Desir­ae: Some­thing else about the UCONN expe­ri­ence is that, from what I know, well, when I lived in Gar­ri­gus, it was co ed floors, so that I was liv­ing with women, of course, but then across the Roy in the hall­way would be men or some­thing. And I think a lot of the dorms. The dorms do the. Around here, the main fresh­man ones are, like north north­west, pos­si­bly tow­ers, and hill­top, if you’re in the learn­ing com­mu­ni­ties, fan­cy peo­ple. but also you have to get used to the co ed floors, where it might be all women on one floor, but then up there, it’s gonna be men and alter­nat­ing each time. So the thing about that is, noise.

Ahyeong: Noise. Yeah, I agree.

Desir­ae: It would­n’t always be the room­mate specif­i­cal­ly. I would make noise. In my expe­ri­ence, there’s always the peo­ple above me, and I was on the fourth floor. I don’t know how the heck I was on the top floor, and some­how there was a noise on my ceil­ing. So let that mys­tery be there. But the thing about adjust­ing to UCONN is that a lot of kids in their fresh­man year, this is their first time, like, away from home, espe­cial­ly liv­ing on their own, and they’re sur­round­ed by a bunch of oth­er sim­i­lar age peo­ple. It gets very chaot­ic very quick­ly, and I think that some­thing that we. What you imme­di­ate­ly learn when you start liv­ing on cam­pus is that not every­body is home trained.

Eri­ca: Yeah, that’s so true.

Desir­ae: By home train­ing, I mean, like, they don’t clean up after them­selves prop­er­ly, which isn’t usu­al­ly a prob­lem unless you’re liv­ing in an area that might have a kitchen, a bath­room, or if you’re shar­ing a space with some­body that does­n’t seem to be on the same wave­length as you. I agree.

Eri­ca: Yeah. I think col­lege made me real­ize how dif­fer­ent our lives are, because there is, like, me, for exam­ple, I’m African. So the way I’m raised, I guess, like, we’re raised a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent­ly. Maybe you guys can chime in on, like, how you’re, So, Yeah, so, like, I was raised a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent­ly, where it’s, like, by the time you’re a teenag­er, you know, how to, cook the basic meals and clean up after your­self, show­er your­self, wash. Like my house­hold, there is no way you eat and leave dish­es in the sink. But you go to col­lege and it’s like your dish­es have been in the sink for a week. Flies are going around it. It’s just gross. And it makes you ques­tion and won­der, like, how some peo­ple’s home train­ing, because a lot of them, you real­ize that, like, they have nev­er lived on their own and had to do stuff for them­selves or do laun­dry and take care of them­selves until they got to col­lege. And mom is not here any­more to do all of that stuff for you. But for us, who grow up a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent­ly, it’s stress­ful because we’re like, how do you not know how to do this? And they’re like, so it’s kind of like weird because at the same time, you can’t exact­ly blame them because that’s just how they were raised. But in your eyes, you’re like, there’s just no way. Because we are also raised differently.

Many exchange students also have some difficulties with their roommates

So maybe you guys can also chime in on how, like, your cul­tures, your dif­fer­ent cul­tures and eth­nic­i­ties kind of affect­ed your col­lege life.

Ahyeong: I agree. Yeah. For exam­ple, I just have lived in my Kore­an dorm, but this is my first dorm life in the US. So in com­par­i­son to dif­fer­ent cities, like in Korea,

00:15:00

Ahyeong: in Dorm, we just respect our spaces more. I think we just kept it down in the dorm because we don’t want to make a loud noise in our room. But in us, just peo­ple do their own thing. In my case, if I’m study­ing, my room­mate just keep talk­ing on the phone and she does­n’t care about what I’m doing. So it is kind of dif­fer­ent cul­ture and dif­fer­ent, you know, personalities.

Desir­ae: Are you part of any of the cul­tur­al clubs on cam­pus when, like, talk­ing with oth­er for­eign exchange stu­dents, where they’re also sur­prised at how Amer­i­can, specif­i­cal­ly Amer­i­can col­lege cul­ture is?

Ahyeong: yeah. Many exchange stu­dents also have some dif­fi­cul­ties with their room­mates. Like the room­mate just naked on the room or just. Yeah, put lotion like that. And also my friend said that, her room­mates bring her boyfriend in the dorm and they fucked up in the room even if she in the bed. So I was so sur­prised of that. Like, in Korea, that is real­ly, real­ly bad thing. And if that did­n’t hap­pen, that per­son have to go out of the col­lege. So I just. Shocked.

Eri­ca: I’ve also heard of a sit­u­a­tion where a friend told me that she also had a room­mate who was just not the best because she would do things exact­ly like that where she would have her boyfriend over, and they’ll be hav­ing sex, like, while she’s there. And for me, I’m just like, how do you focus? And even, like, I guess in many ways enjoy the act, know­ing that some­one is there, watch­ing, lis­ten­ing your every maneuver.

College roommates have a modest but significant influence on each other’s political ideology

Desir­ae: So, this study, col­lege room­mates have a mod­est but sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on each oth­er’s polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. From Logan Strother, Spencer Pis­ton, Ezra Gold­ber­stein, Sara Golist, and Daniel Eisen­berg. So, pret­ty much, from what I under­stand through the abstract, is that they try to test whether or not the idea that col­lege makes you more lib­er­al was actu­al­ly true, because that’s kind of a com­mon thing I’m not sure about in all col­leges. But in Amer­i­can col­leges, there def­i­nite­ly is, like, that polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy ingrained in col­lege life where we’ve seen stu­dent protests all the time. We’ve seen it for, like, Viet­nam. Right now we’re see­ing it for Pales­tine and Israel. So they kind of looked at this. I think this was back in 2020, so it was­n’t even with Pales­tine and Israel yet. And what they found was that while we did find lit­tle evi­dence that col­lege stu­dents as a whole become more lib­er­al over time, we do find strong evi­dence of peer effects in which stu­dent polit­i­cal views become more in line with the views of their room­mates over time. And this effect is strongest for con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents. So, m they argue that this is kind of an aspect of why maybe we have a high­er lev­el of polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion right now. But I want your thoughts on, like, are you see­ing this kind of phe­nom­e­non hap­pen­ing, too right now?

Eri­ca: So, first of all, where is this study from again?

Desir­ae: Nation­al, Library of Med­i­cine or the Nation­al cen­ter for Biotech­nol­o­gy Infor­ma­tion? It’s hard to see exact­ly which col­lege did this, but Daniel Eisen­berg, I believe his name pops up in anoth­er study, which is done at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan from, the New York Times back in 2010.

Eri­ca: Okay, so your ques­tion is if we feel like, based on our expe­ri­ences, if being a col­lege stu­dent and liv­ing with room­mates makes you more lib­er­al, lib­er­al or.

Desir­ae: The oth­er way around, it seems, where it’s just not nec­es­sar­i­ly col­lege itself that makes you more polar­ized, but it’s the peo­ple you sur­round your­self with which I can under­stand, like, that it does­n’t take a whole jump, leap of faith to get to that con­clu­sion. I feel like.

Eri­ca: I think it depends on the expe­ri­ence, because for some­one can say, yeah, I absolute­ly think col­lege made me more lib­er­al. Liv­ing with a room­mate made me more lib­er­al because it allowed me to voice out my opin­ions and express things. Maybe, like, for exam­ple, if some­one from high school, you know, in high school, they were pret­ty, like, timid, and they did­n’t feel com­fort­able speak­ing in class and things like that. How­ev­er, they go to, they go to col­lege and they have to live with their room­mates, and they have to, you know, talk to peo­ple, have group projects and all these dif­fer­ent things. So they have no choice but to voice out their opin­ions. They have no choice but to inter­act with peo­ple. They have no choice but to express them­selves. And so in that sense, they, I guess, gain a bit of, like, self like, free­dom in the inside where they feel like, okay, I feel lib­er­al because being in col­lege, as a stu­dent, hav­ing room­mates has allowed me to do all these things that I was so scared to do, like in high school and stuff. And so I guess in that case, like, that per­son could say, yeah, col­lege has allowed me to be lib­er­al because it has allowed me to, come out of my shell in many ways. Does that make sense?

Desir­ae: For sure. So there’s main­ly two types of room­mates that you start off with. One is one you find ahead of time. Hope­ful­ly it’s a friend from high school, maybe, or a friend that you’ve known so that you’re more com­fort­able liv­ing with them. And then the oth­er option would be ran­doms, which aren’t always bad at all. Like, I love my ran­dom, I love you, Eve­lyn. but either way, I think for both of these sit­u­a­tions, it applies where you

00:20:00

Desir­ae: need to set bound­aries way ahead of time. You need to make things clear, and it does take time to under­stand how oth­er peo­ple are liv­ing, to under­stand exact­ly what kind of per­son they are. But for sure, you need to com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly. On a fun­ny note, I was just look­ing at that arti­cle I men­tioned, and to get par­tic­i­pants for the study, stu­dents were sent an intro­duc­to­ry let­ter with a dol­lar ten bill and a request to par­tic­i­pate. So they bribed them. that was just fun­ny to me.

Eri­ca: Yeah, very eth­i­cal, but.

Desir­ae: Any tips Ahyeong for living?

Ahyeong: I think it is kind of good way to ask help to RA can make some space. Me and room­mate can talk, and we can make some rules or husky agree­ment or some­thing, and he keep care about us. So I think talk­ing with RA is kind of a good choice.

Desir­ae: I think you’re think­ing of the word like moderator.

Eri­ca: That’s what the RA does.

Ahyeong: Yeah, moderator.

We hope you guys enjoy this episode of Living in Sync

Eri­ca: All right, you guys, so that is the end of the episode. Once again, you’re lis­ten­ing to liv­ing in sync. Once again, my name is Eri­ca Desiree, and you also heard from our oth­er chat cast host, Jovi, and we hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Let us know what some of your crazy room­mate sto­ries that you guys have expe­ri­enced or you’ve heard from friends and loved ones. And with­out fur­ther ado, we hope you guys enjoyed this episode once again. And we’ll see you guys lat­er. Bye.

00:21:27