When you enter college, you always hope that you will find, or be randomly be assigned, a great roommate. You wish for someone who has similar interests as you. You hope for someone who will be willing to take a step outside of your comfort zone with you. You hope for someone who will be there for you when everything becomes just a little bit too overwhelming. You hope for someone that you can call your new best friend.

However, I have learned through experience, and through the testimonies of others, that this seems to be more of an exception than a given. Rather than expecting to find a new best friend, it appears that the lucky ones who are paired with people who they can say that they tolerate.

While finding someone who you automatically clique with is excellent, it should not always be expected, and if you are one of the unfortunate many who ends up with someone who is not as impressive as you were hoping that does not mean you should look down on your experiences.

You cannot always have a say in who you end up with, but you can control what kind of roommate you are. Therefore, even if you and your roommate don’t get along as well as you want to, there are certain actions you can take to ensure that your time living together is not looked back on negatively.

Sometimes, peaceful cohabitation is all that you can hope for. In order to ensure that this type of cohabitation occurs, each of you must take responsibility for yourselves and be considerate of the other. Making sure that you clean up after yourself, pitching in with joint expenses other than rent, and communicating if your plans to have people over can go a long way. Often these small acts make the difference between a positive roommate experience and a negative one.

Living with someone new can be a challenging experience especially if it is your first time having to live with someone who is not your family. It is always good to be hopeful, but if reality does not meet your expectation, it is not the end of the world. Be open, be courteous, keep the lines of communication open, and the time spent together can be at the very least hospitable.

Of course, you cannot control how you roommate behaves....but that is a topic for a different time.