Please Housing?

My roommate and I were talking about where we are going to live next year. We decided that we were going to live together again, so that takes out a lot of stress with worrying about who you are living with the next semester. When we went on the housing website to find out where we are living next year, the site had no details. I went to the housing office to see if they could look it up in their system, but they said that they didn’t have that information yet. Why is it that they don’t have that information?

If we had that information now, we could schedule our classes around where we live and work out the timing so that we could have time to go home between classes and be able to schedule them so that we don’t have to wake up too early. For example, if we knew we were living in South, then a class in Thomas at 9:05 wouldn’t seem so bad, because they are practically across the street from each other. We could also prepare ourselves for the 20-minute walk in the cold, if we had a class in the Ford building from South. I feel that I would sleep better knowing where I’m going to be moving my stuff in a few short months.

I miss the days of not having a care in the world. Little details like figuring out where you have to move your stuff for the next semester can be really stressing to an individual. You would think that housing would make the process of figuring out where you are living readily available as soon as they sorted through all of the housing contracts, but I feel that is not the case. I don’t think they find pleasure in delaying the process, but I just wish they could get the information out faster so that my roommate and I didn’t have to wonder every day where we are going to be next year.

April Fool's Day

Yesterday, I thought of many ways that I could prank my roommate for April Fool’s Day. After thinking about some pretty good ideas, I decided that it would just be too mean to prank my roommate. Apparently, he felt otherwise. I had to work today at 6:15 AM, so I set my alarm last night for 5:25 AM. While I was sleeping, my roommate reset my alarm so that it would go off an hour later, but he also moved the time back so that I wouldn’t be late for work, I would just think that I was late. Not only did he set back my alarm clock, he followed through with his prank by setting forward every other clock in the room so that I would truly believe I had woken up late. As I woke up this morning, I fell for the prank completely. I ended up running to work without taking a shower to find out that I was 40 minutes early.

When I got home from work today, he explained all of the follow up pranks that he was going to do as well, but chose not to.  He said that he was going to put quarters in the freezer and then put them in my shoes before I got up, and also jam the door with quarters so that I couldn’t get outside. I never would have thought that when I went to bed, my roommate had been plotting the entire time. Even though this was just a harmless prank, it gets me thinking about how you can never fully trust someone. When you watch those old James Bond type movies where a fellow agent or a close friend betrays the special agent, I never thought that I would fall for that. Reading people is an art, and I guess you can never fully know someone’s intentions.  

Remember Those Funny Movies...

When I was growing up, I had a brother who was ten years older than me, so I feel that I was probably exposed to a lot of stuff at a very early age. I remember watching MTV in the third grade and I also remember watching all of the popular R-rated movies of the ‘90s when I was still in 4^th grade. My roommate on the other hand didn’t have the same experience. Recently, when we were going through funny movies we had seen, I discovered he had never seen popular teen movies, such as, American Pie, Euro Trip, and Anchorman. After I heard this, I immediately thought that it was my responsibility to expose him to every bit of the movie pop culture that he missed when he was growing up.

            Today, I saw that Euro Trip was on the movie channel, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to show my roommate one of the great movies from our middle school days. When I was thirteen, I thought the movie was hilarious; after watching it now, I wonder why I thought it was so funny. I guess you could say that I realized that what you find funny could change over time. When I was younger, slapstick comedy seemed hilarious and now I think that political satire is the best thing since sliced bread.  I realized that if my sense of human can change, I wonder what else has changed? Living with someone else can make you reflect how much you’ve changed as a person over time. Like that older brother or sister in your life that would keep you in check, a roommate can help you self-evaluate and get a better image of who you are as you mature in life at college. Sometimes the best image of yourself is hearing how you relate to other people’s lives, and the impact you can make on them. 

March Madness

As most of you could tell from class, one of my favorite times of the year is March. There’s nothing particularly interesting about March except for one thing; March Madness! The only way I can describe how awesome it is would be that if the Goddess of basketball and Santa Claus had a child, it would be the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament. I was so excited for the Divisional Tournaments to end so that the Bracket for the tournament to come out. My roommate on the other hand didn’t share my excitement. I printed off a few copies for myself to fill out immediately and I even did the good roommate thing and printed off a copy for him to fill out. As I spent the next two hours filling out brackets, my roommate’s just sat there on his desk, without even a pencil scratch on it.

            At first I was puzzled, but then I thought that maybe he didn’t have an adequate pencil, or maybe he wanted to get some divine help with his bracket by praying about it for a while, but this was not the case. When I asked him, if he had selected the Sweet Sixteen (the last sixteen teams left in the tournament) yet, and he responded with, “Ah, I’ll get around to it eventually.” What?!?! I wasn’t going to accept that my roommate wasn’t feeling the March Madness, so all I talked about for the next forty minutes was college basketball. I had to convert him, so that he could feel the excitement of the big dance. After much talk and debate about teams, I finally got him excited about the tournament. I got him to fill out his bracket and with a little luck, hopefully he will become a fanatic March Madness fan like I am in the future.

      When I was about twelve years old, my aunt tried to get me to watch the show Survivor with her. I watched the show maybe two more times, but then got bored with the show, which seemed to just document a bunch of people suffering in the jungle, and then forgot about it forever. Survivor use to be one of the most watched shows on television, but as of recently it has fallen out of the spotlight. If you told my roommate that, he would accuse you of treason. Survivor is my roommate’s favorite television show of all time. He has watched every episode at least three times, which is very impressive considering there are over twenty seasons. He is also Facebook friends with multiple cast members from the show and can recite to you a plethora of facts from the show.

      When Survivor premiered its new season in the fall, Matt had mentioned that he was going to be watching the show religiously, but there was one problem; he was scheduled to work during the show’s airing time every week. He mentioned that he would just have to watch it on the Internet later. I thought nothing of his comment, so on the premiere night of Survivor, I went to bed at ten o’clock hoping to get a great night’s sleep before I had to wake-up early the next morning. At’ around 3:30 in the morning, I woke up to clapping and cheers of glee. Apparently, my roommate had stayed up until 3:00 in the morning so that he could watch his favorite television show as soon as possible. Some people might think that he is insane, but I guess you could also see him as one of the most motivated people in the world. The largest lesson I have learned this far from college is to never believe that everyone will do the same thing that you would do in the situation. If it were me, I probably would have waited till the next afternoon or sometime the next week to watch the episode, but my roommate is a completely different person with a whole different frame of mind on life. To him, survivor is entertainment. To me, 10:00 means bed time.

I Did Tell You to Keep Me Awake, Right?

A good quality in a roommate is one that can inspire you to do something for the better. On Wednesday night, I knew that the next morning was going to be a very early one, but I also knew that I had a ton of homework to cram in before my Thursday set of classes. I told my roommate that I needed to stay awake until at least 12, something that doesn’t happen very often, considering my early weekly schedule. He told me, “No prob, I’ll make sure you stay awake.”

At around 10 o’clock, I started to feel extremely tired and started to rationalize with myself that I could skip my morning workout and get my homework done then, so that I could go to sleep now. I finally convinced myself that deviating from my original plan was a good idea, so I crawled into bed. Around 15 minutes later, my roommate walked in the room and saw me curled up in my bed. He turned on all of the lights in the room, turned the television up as loud as it would go, and started to play the, “THON dance” on his computer. It was by far the most obnoxious way to get someone out of bed I had ever encountered, so I took evasive maneuvers and pulled the covers over my head to try and hide from the bright lights and obnoxious lyrics of the, "THON dance," which happens to be my roommate new pump-up music. My roommate then began to flash the lights so many times I thought I was going to develop epilepsy. I finally jumped out of bed so that the madness would stop. He then calmly turned the t.v. volume down, returned to his desk, and began his work. A good roommate is one who will always keep his promises, even if that means forcing you to stay awake so that you will be prepared for the next day.

Hey Wanna Try A New Sport?

When you compete against someone, it’s great to win and be able to go home and pat yourself on the back for how awesome you are. When you compete against your roommate, it’s a different story. My roommate loves to play racquetball, a sport that I introduced him to. Earlier in the year, I had asked him if he wanted to go learn to play racquetball so that we could have a sport that we could play together in which neither of us has any particular advantage. The first time we went to play, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I absolutely destroyed him. I had played a few times at home and had a pretty good awareness of the court. I told my roommate it was no big deal and that, “I’m sure you’ll do better next time.” The following week, I didn’t see my roommate a whole lot, and I started to wonder where he had been sneaking out to for the entire week. The next weekend my roommate was finally back in our room, so I decided to ask him if he wanted to play a quick game of racquetball. He said, “Sure, I guess I could try and play again.”

            So we went to the IM building to go play. The last time we had played, the game started out very slow; this time, however, things were different. He was ready. He beat me; well to tell the truth, he completely annihilated me. Any confidence that I had in myself regarding athletic ability was completely gone. After he was satisfied with his victory, I asked him, “So where have you been all week?” He responded, “Practicing, of course. I’m really starting to like this game.” HE now is part of the IM league and has a chart of all of the ranked players that he hopes to defeat in the upcoming season. I created a racquetball junky.