A lot of people can relate when I say I don’t like to be alone and  thrive off interactions with other people — a very extroverted mindset. When the pandemic first hit and we all had to go on lockdown, many of us started to feel lonely, sad and hopeless. Although that experience has made me like hanging out with myself a bit more and more comfortable being alone, I’d still prefer to be socially active and have some human interaction on a daily basis. It’s because of this that I say having roommates during this time has been one of the biggest blessings of all.

I like to think of roommates as built-in friends that pay to live with you. And honestly, it doesn’t get better than that. This year, it helped that I was already friends with all my roommates before we moved in together and that made it a lot easier to stay inside and follow social distancing guidelines. Of course, there is nothing wrong with living alone, and living alone has many benefits itself, but when our government and administration are telling us to stay inside, that can definitely get tough.

I started to realize this year that sometimes, there is nothing better than just sitting inside your living room with your roommates and killing a pack of White Claws or a bottle of wine. I became more of a homebody than I ever was before, and we kept ourselves and other people safe while we did so. I know day in and day out at least one person will be at home and someone will always be around and down to hang out at the end of the day. There’s always someone around to sit and eat lunch with if we both have a free hour during the day. 

Also, now that a lot of classes have moved online, my roommates and I have taken the same classes and joined our Zoom meetings together. It’s sad not being able to be in classrooms with the rest of our class and professors, but we made it work and had a makeshift classroom in our own house. It also helped when we would have homework questions; the answers would just be a couple doors down the hall.

All throughout our lives, we hear roommate horror stories, roommate success stories and everything in between. With the tough and disappointing year we’ve had, though, roommates have played such a new and unique role in my life.

Samantha is a senior in Media. 

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