One of a girl’s biggest fears when she is getting ready for college is finding a good roommate who doesn’t end up turning into a horror story. She will stress over meeting people in the class Facebook group before housing information is due, and then crosses her fingers that the girl she picked actually is who she’s said she is in conversation.

I’ll admit, just like every other girl, I did have this fear. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go random, or if I wanted to pick who I lived with, but now as a sophomore, I can tell you, I made the right choice.

I found my roommate on our class Facebook page, and we talked on and off for maybe a month before deciding to try living together. At the time, my roommate lived super far away from me and there was a five-hour time difference between us, so that made talking a tad difficult, but we were able to talk enough that I felt confident we had things in common, but were also unique in our right.

My roommate is a nursing student, and I am a music business student, so our interests are almost polar opposite, but that’s part of the many reasons that we get along so well. We get to share in each other’s excitement even when we don’t understand it, and we are still great friends without being attached to each other by the hip.

The whole point in me saying this is that it is good to be different than your roommate. In fact, I would say it’s better than being the exact same because you each have your own things that you do, but you also share a couple common interests. Being different gives you space so you don’t drive each other completely crazy.

Not to mention, if you and your roommate are like clones of each other, what would all those nighttime chats be like? If you do the exact same work and the exact same clubs, chances are, at the end of the day, you might not even want to talk about anything but how much homework you have. The other person probably already knows everything you may end up talking about since they were there too.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do anything with your roommate, I’m just saying that it’s important to keep a good balance. My roommate and I have a couple of things we do together that get us out of the room and enjoying school, and I love that we get to share in some of those things together. But, I’m also glad that at the end of the day we can each come back and share what we did or something exciting that happened to us when we were apart.

Your roommate will become your best friend, and even your family, when you live together for a whole year, maybe even more like me and my roommate. Living with someone else is all about balance and playing off of each other’s personalities, and I’m so glad I’ve found that.