In Boston, one of the most expensive cities in the United States, having a college roommate is not just a rite of passage but often a financial necessity.

Sharing a typically cramped and run down college apartment with other equally busy students is rarely smooth sailing. Arguments over taking out the trash and doing dishes will inevitably surface.

For some, these issues will break relationships, resulting in awkward silences and chore charts. For others, the intimacy of a roommate relationship will turn into something more akin to a sibling bond that will last a lifetime.

**The random connection **

Megan Alexander, a second-year design major who opted to live with a random roommate her first year, had the latter experience.

“Our case was very, very peculiar in the sense that it worked out a little too well, because we balanced each other out super well,” Alexander said.

Undergraduates entering the university as first-year students through fall admission are required to live in university housing, and 95% of them will live in a double, triple or quad occupancy room, according to Northeastern’s website. While incoming first-year students have the option to request a roommate, 75% are matched by the housing application, colloquially referred to as a “going random.”

“A lot of my friends in high school were looking on their school pages to try to find people to talk to,” Alexander said. “It had just gotten very late in the game to do that, so I ended up messaging one person on the Northeastern freshman incoming page, and I don’t know how I missed this, but she wasn’t even on the Boston campus. Then the deadline passed, and I was like, ‘Why not go random?’ I’ll just do it anyway, see what happens.”

Students enter college knowing what building they’ll be living in and what classes they’ll be taking, but won’t discover how, or if, they get along with their roommate until they arrive.

“I was nervous for sure, because I had heard a bunch of stories, like horror stories, of people and their random roommates,” Alexander said. “I was truly hoping that I was gonna get somebody good. I had faith, and, you know, I was just like, if it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out. It’ll just be somewhere I live, we’ll see each other every once in a while. Then the day came to move in, and I was really nervous, and I met Yashavi, and she was so sweet.”

Alexander’s experience ended up being a wholly positive one, teaching her what she wants and needs from a roommate and changing her standards for all future living situations.

“Before coming into college, I had the expectation of just having a roommate that was easy to live with, somebody who had open communication, who wasn’t insanely messy or anything like that,” she said. “Now … I have very high expectations for any roommate situation that I come into in the future, because it wasn’t just open communication, it was also [that] she made me question some things and think more critically. She very much changed me over freshman year in a positive way … and she also thinks that I changed her in a positive way.”

The late night caller

For some students, like second-year civil engineering major Ian Burns, a roommate doesn’t necessarily guarantee a built-in best friend.

“[My roommate] was very nice, but after about two days, it just went really downhill,” Burns said. “He would FaceTime his long distance girlfriend, like, [he was] always on the phone with her, and he would never leave the room, so I couldn’t do work or anything in there, because they were always on FaceTime.”

His roommate would take calls without headphones and often disrupt Burns’ sleep despite his best efforts to drown the couple out.

“He didn’t have headphones he would wear either, so I could hear them. And they were making all sorts of noises and whatever, but they would always meow at each other,” he said. “I had ear plugs and a face mask, trying to drown it out, but I would just hear them, like, meowing and whimpering and baby talking.”

Burns said that while he tried to set boundaries, his roommate would often cross or flat out ignore them. “I tried to have conversations with him, but he would flip it and just blame me or have some excuse,” he said.

While the experience was not something he’d want to repeat, Burns said it taught him some valuable lessons about both having and being a roommate.

“I’m very self aware [now] of how I am in regards to staying up late and cleaning up after myself and personal space and all of that,” he said. “Also, [my current roommate] had his girlfriend stay over, and they were pretty loud, talking all night, and I was able to be like, ‘Hey, can you not do that?’ So I do feel more prepared now.”

**The future girlfriend **

Third-year health science major Mandy Alexander didn’t just get lucky with her housing situation, she hit the jackpot when her first-year roommate Suyasha Athuluri became her long-term girlfriend.

“You don’t expect to get a girlfriend out of a random roommate assortment. But I guess I got really lucky,” said Alexander, who lived with seven girls in Claire Springs Townhouse on the Oakland campus during her first semester at Northeastern.

“It was really cool meeting in Oakland. I wanted to state specifically the legacy of Mills College as being like a haven for a bunch of lesbians to meet up and be radical about it,” she said. “San Francisco was such a long ride away and felt like such an expensive area that it was kind of, I don’t want to be dramatic or anything, but it was kind of a magical experience being able to go and explore with my girlfriend, my friends.”

She explained how living together allowed her and Athuluri to get to know each other very well, almost immediately.

“I would go down to her forced double every night and sit in her [direct] roommate’s chair, because her roommate was chronically absent, and we would just talk for four hours like every day,” she said. “[We started dating] very fast. Lesbian U-Haul stereotypes are a thing, and I’ve proven them right. I moved in at the end of August. We did orientation, and we began dating Sept. 25.”

At first, Alexander and Athuluri were nervous to tell their other roommates about their relationship.

“I’m aware of the fact that you should not start dating people after meeting them as random roommates,” she said. “So we kept it casual for like, I would say two months, but it was getting increasingly obvious. And eventually we were like, ‘We have nothing to hide actually.’ People would ask, and I’d be like, ‘Yes, we are dating.’”

Both meeting in San Francisco and being roommates has impacted their relationship in a positive way.

“In San Francisco, it was really great, because we were able to take public transit and go out into the city. It was just really easy to go on dates,” she said. “[Being roommates] helped us figure out what’s important about living together domestically before we even learned what each other’s romantic preferences are. This is how I learned that she is so down for anything, and that was one of the reasons I fell in love with her.”

Whether you’re living on or off campus, with one roommate or with seven, remember to do your dishes, set boundaries and invest in a good pair of headphones.