The Roommate Situation.
"But wait...which one is her actual name?"
I gawked at the email I had gotten from the school I was to study abroad at with the names of my flatmates, and the girl I was to share a room with.
She had four names.
FOUR.
And I didn't have the slightest idea which one was her first.
So, doing what a 'normal' person would do, I frantically tried typing in all of them- each one getting it's turn as the first- into the Facebook search box to make sure my to-be roommate was not from hell.
Study abroad is an experiences that you carry with you all your life. It is something that is designed to bring you a step closer to what you want to be. It's safe to say then that having a roommate that you get along with is crucial because the individual living five feet away from you can either make or break your study abroad experience.
My past roommate experiences were horrendous to say the least. I came out the other side of those semesters, bruised, battered and broken both mentally and physically. So believe me when I say I was beyond paranoid about how my roommate situation in Florence was going to turn out.
To my dismay, I couldn't find her on Facebook. It was 2016, who doesn't have Facebook? Psycho roommate killers, that's who.
I spent the remainder of the days leading up to my departure utterly frustrated at the unpredictability of my roommate situation.
When I finally met my Facebook-less roommate, she was, thankfully, not a psycho roommate killer; she was however, the French, pixie-haired, prettier version of me. My school had paired me...with me.
And her name, out of all the four, was Jade.
Over the course of four months, Jade and I became more than roommates. We became friends. We were both two individuals walking into foreign territory; literally and figuratively. I, because I had never known a positive roommate experience and she, because she had never had to live away from home. We were living and learning in the same space. And that, more than anything is what brought us together.
We bonded.
We fangirled over our mutual love for Harry Potter, make-up and other pop culture, our laughter bouncing off the walls as late as 2 am.
We had moments of contented silence.
We had disagreements, sometimes not seeing eye-to-eye.
But over the course of four months, that mutual respect never wavered.
Jade and I rarely talk now, sans the occasional Facebook banter -yes, she has Facebook, I'm just a terrible stalker- due to time zones and busy lives. But over the course of those four months, in times of need, I became Jade's confidante.
As she became mine.
I gawked at the email I had gotten from the school I was to study abroad at with the names of my flatmates, and the girl I was to share a room with.
She had four names.
FOUR.
And I didn't have the slightest idea which one was her first.
So, doing what a 'normal' person would do, I frantically tried typing in all of them- each one getting it's turn as the first- into the Facebook search box to make sure my to-be roommate was not from hell.
Study abroad is an experiences that you carry with you all your life. It is something that is designed to bring you a step closer to what you want to be. It's safe to say then that having a roommate that you get along with is crucial because the individual living five feet away from you can either make or break your study abroad experience.
My past roommate experiences were horrendous to say the least. I came out the other side of those semesters, bruised, battered and broken both mentally and physically. So believe me when I say I was beyond paranoid about how my roommate situation in Florence was going to turn out.
To my dismay, I couldn't find her on Facebook. It was 2016, who doesn't have Facebook? Psycho roommate killers, that's who.
I spent the remainder of the days leading up to my departure utterly frustrated at the unpredictability of my roommate situation.
When I finally met my Facebook-less roommate, she was, thankfully, not a psycho roommate killer; she was however, the French, pixie-haired, prettier version of me. My school had paired me...with me.
And her name, out of all the four, was Jade.
Over the course of four months, Jade and I became more than roommates. We became friends. We were both two individuals walking into foreign territory; literally and figuratively. I, because I had never known a positive roommate experience and she, because she had never had to live away from home. We were living and learning in the same space. And that, more than anything is what brought us together.
We bonded.
We fangirled over our mutual love for Harry Potter, make-up and other pop culture, our laughter bouncing off the walls as late as 2 am.
We had moments of contented silence.
We had disagreements, sometimes not seeing eye-to-eye.
But over the course of four months, that mutual respect never wavered.
Jade and I rarely talk now, sans the occasional Facebook banter -yes, she has Facebook, I'm just a terrible stalker- due to time zones and busy lives. But over the course of those four months, in times of need, I became Jade's confidante.
As she became mine.
Comments
Post a Comment