All my life I have been an only child. However, all that changed when I got to college.
Freshman year I started off by joining a sorority and living with a roommate, but she ended up moving in with one of her friends. Then came sophomore year.
When I joined a sorority I knew that I would have to live in my sorority's house for at least one year. That meant dealing with about 60 to 80 other girls along with sharing 4 washers and dryers, about 10 showers, and of course Wi-Fi. This was an even greater change for me then it was just having a roommate freshman year.
Move-in was hectic since we only have one set of stairs in the house to carry everything up. There was also only one small room to unpack two to five people's belongings in, including mine. We succeeded after long hours of unpacking, hanging clothes and photographs.
That day, I gained what seemed like hundreds of roommates. We all rushed down to our first live-in meeting and for long-awaited lunch.
The biggest difference I saw was that many of my sorority sisters grew up with siblings, so they were already accustomed to living with tons of people and sharing a small space or a bathroom.
All of the girls who were only children, like me, looked at each other in amazement at how many people were squeezed into The Tube (what we call our TV and lounge room). During the meeting, they discussed the tips and tricks of how to live with so many other girls. These included how to coordinate laundry times and shower times.
They also suggested to print a few nights before any assignment would be actually due, to take care of any potential printer wars or malfunctions.
One of the biggest downfalls of living with this many other people is exactly this. The printer likes to shut down and fail at the worst possible times because we are all constantly printing essays, homework or power-points. Some nights when it's just not cooperating, we just travel in a group to the library to print there on the industrial printers.
Although there are some negatives with living with so many girls, there are also so many benefits and upsides to it. Our sisterhood has grown so much closer since move-in through eating dinner together in the kitchen or watching "The Bachelor" in The Tube.
Another plus to living in the house is you always have someone to go on a Starbucks run with you or to go to Fuzzy's tacos at 1 am after a long study session in the basement study room.
I am very thankful for gaining so many roommates and having the opportunity to live in our beautiful house with them. They are all so supportive and are always willing to help me with homework that I just don't understand, which for me consists of troubles working Adobe InDesign.
I don't know what I would do without all these young ladies surrounding me and becoming life-long sisters and friends.
