Roommates

I am an undesirable roommate. This evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of my co-habitation experiences have ended in disaster. There was the girl at camp who left bits of Slim Jim hidden in the carpet. Another roommate spent hours admiring herself in the mirror, took life size glamour shots to hang up in her room at home, and somehow came away with the impression that I was the self-absorbed one. My college roommate and I were great friends...until we actually had to share one room instead of two. And my roommates in grad school had a bitter parting after it was revealed that one was cheating on the rent.

In any case, because of my own lack of skill in this arena, I hold a very high level of respect for people who can successfully live together in peace and harmony. In my opinion then, Chinese college students are no less than gods. They share a tiny dorm room with five other randomly selected students. That's six students per room: three bunk beds, one large table, and one small desk. Just look at this:



Each window represents six students. And they stay in the same room, with the same roommates, for all of college. Imagine a world where your roommates know every detail of your life, including who calls you, how often they call, what you say to them, what time you wake up in the morning, what time you go to sleep, how often you skip class, what you do in your free time, what you snack on, how often you snack, how often you do laundry, and so on.

Despite (or because of?) this forced intimacy, roommates typically forge a special bond with one another. They usually have all of their meals together, go out together, borrow each other's stuff (often without asking), and generally function as a unit. They even shower together, because I guess nothing says "friendship" like a good back scrub. (This actually isn't completely unreasonable, since showers are communal and take place in a special building across campus. As a result, showering is more of an "event" than you might think, and at the point where you're standing naked with a bunch of classmates, you might as well have one of them get your back.)

To me, the amazing thing about all of this is that no one complains. Okay, well, fine, I've heard two people complain about their roommates. One guy complained about his roommates smelly feet, and one girl complained that a few of her roommates study too much for her taste. But seriously? That's nothing. If it were me, I know I'd be annoyed that someone's alarm goes off every morning at 6:30, or that so-and-so slurps her tea too loudly, or that whats-her-name is always on the phone when I'm trying to sleep, and so on.

Which I guess is why I'm such a bad roommate.