THE CASE FOR RANDOMIZED ROOMATES

By Stella Essenmacher ‘25

In my two years at Hamilton, I’ve gone through four housing selections, three of which were out of my control. Plenty of people have attained great success through the housing lottery and have really enjoyed getting to room with their close friends. But tons of other people enter the selection process each year with no clue who to room with. Their friends might have hit it off with their former roommates, want a single, or just have different living styles. Ultimately, the fact that your good friend wakes up at 6 am every morning might not affect you because you talk to them in the afternoon once you are both up, but it might start getting on your nerves if you sleep from 1am -10am. That’s someone banging around the room for a half an hour in the middle of the night every single night.

At the end of my first year, I was talking to several people about possibly rooming with them, but they were also talking with several people. Multiple people flaked on me at the last minute because I didn’t communicate my interest well enough, and that led to a panic. My friend set me up on a blind date at Fojo with her friend who I had never met to discuss the potential of rooming together. I honestly cannot really remember why we did not room together, but we remain friends to this day and it was a fun way to meet someone. With my third roommate, I was living by myself in a double at the time, so I was assigned a new roommate. The two of us met upstairs in Commons and I laid out everything that irritates me in a roommate and my personal quirks. With this information, she could make a decision about whether living with me seemed like a good fit, and it also set the foundation for a communicative relationship.

Living with friends brings a layer of challenges to an already complex relationship. For those of us who are introverted, college forces us to interact with people all day long, making our room one of the only sources of solitude available to us. When one’s room becomes a source of stress, it can affect one’s sleep and mental health. Furthermore, there is a great benefit of having someone completely detached from your life to be able to discuss personal issues with. It is incredibly helpful to vent about someone to an outside party who won’t go sharing my life with other people or to cry in my room about someone who I know won’t walk in any moment. I have both provided and been provided that resource and it has greatly aided in dealing with the constant challenges of being a college student.

While my path through college roommates has not been as linear as I thought it would be, it has allowed me to meet people who run in different circles than I do, improve my communication and confrontation skills, and provided me with trustworthy confidants. Rather than it being a last-resort choice that those with no friends make, I encourage people to see going random as a means of creating an ideal living environment. At the end of the day, someone who you love to death might simply not be a good roommate for you, and it is a real risk that rooming together might do more harm than good. Of course, every relationship is different, and for many it works, but for those who worry about taking that risk, going random is a great option.

The Continental staff can attest to the fact that I have been severely procrastinating writing my final article for the Continental Magazine. I am still reeling from the shock that my college experience, defined mostly by COVID and a little by the rapidly changing dining hall menus, will be over in a mere couple of weeks. Being tasked with writing a senior reflection to sum up the entirety of my tumultuous four years at Hamilton College is incredibly daunting and possibly impossible. In short, my college experience was completely unexpected.

Being a Jan, a label that still haunts me on this campus even as I am graduating, meant that my freshman year on Hamilton’s campus lasted about eight weeks. The coldest eight weeks of winter, I might add. London had been an incredible experience of traveling, sightseeing, and partying with no regard for the physical toll it took on my health (I was constantly sick), but I couldn’t wait to arrive on campus and have the experience of college in the way that I had been told by my parents, older sister, and the media. No one could’ve predicted how different our college experience would be from the generations prior.

When I think about Sophomore year, I am immediately reminded of the blue Adirondack chairs scattered about campus: in front of the library, in front of the Science Center, in front of Dunham, and even in Commons. Some other defining moments of that year include the Skunk Instagram account, the marriage pact, weekends spent at Bab Pav, the ever present fear of being locked away in Bristol, and the constant scroll through everyone’s intrusive thoughts posted on Yodel. We learned to adapt. We learned to make friends in times of extreme distress and discomfort. We learned to enjoy the simple moments. We learned how to go absolutely feral in the woods on the weekends, since there really was nothing else to do. Sophomore year definitely felt the longest.

Junior year had promised the full return of Hamilton’s campus, but didn’t quite deliver. Although we saw the revival of in-person classes and concerts, masks and testing remained as did Glenview. Yet, we persisted in both our academic pursuits and our determination to make the most of our time at Hamilton. Junior year was a time to watch sports games, share in the mixed feelings surrounding Fojo’s opening, risk going on an abroad program, eat an overpriced grilled cheese at the Compound, and reluctantly end the night at the Rok (which unfortunately could never really replace the Village Tavern).

For seniors, nostalgia has had an omnipresence on campus this year. The pressure to experience everything, particularly everything we missed in our two and a half years of restrictions, has made it at times difficult to just enjoy the simple moments with your friends and to officially let go of college life. We still feel that we didn’t get to experience college to its fullest, and so we are trying desperately to make up for it. I am struggling myself to think of the moments that have defined our senior year, and I think that’s because this year is where most people have not shared in a collective experience. And although we spend most Thursday nights in the pub singing Karaoke and playing pool, for most seniors, our paths have diverged without the need to find each other and create alternative fun.

I guess the theme of this senior reflection is adaptability and determination. No matter what changed on campus, we were determined to have the Hamilton experience we had been promised. We allowed ourselves to change our expectations, which resulted in not only an incredible college experience but one that was unique to the class of 2023. This tumultuous experience has bonded us, and I can’t wait to begin the next phase of my life with the friendships I have made here. Goodbye, Hamilton.