Why You Shouldn't Room With Your Best Friend

Imagine the fantasy of living with your best friend in college! Your parents are back home, now it's just you two to conquer the university. You have known each other for many years and you feel like you would be perfect roommates for each other! While this may seem like the road you want to travel down, I do have some reasons for not living with your best friend in college:

• Get out of your comfort zone. College is about trying new things and learning how to live away from home and what better way to do that than to live with someone completely new!
• Meet new people. Yes, you can do this while still living with your friend from back home. However, if you room with someone new, you have the opportunity to meet many new people. As you both live together, you begin to meet their friends as they meet yours. My friend had the opportunity of living with an international student from Brazil. She said it was one of her greatest experiences while at Michigan State! 
• The possibility of ruining the friendship. While this may seem hard to imagine at first, it is a real possibility. There are a handful of college students that can say that they lost a friendship due to living together. Imagine your best friend being a slob. You knew this going in and you didn't think it would bug you until you began cleaning up after two people rather than just yourself. Also, imagine bringing home a girl or guy that you kinda like and you walk into your room and your roommate left all their clothes on the floor. Might be grounds for a fight.
• The need for some space. Everyone needs some alone time, some time to unwind and chill out. Alone time will be harder to come by if you live with your best friend and you two are constantly together. Constantly being with the same person all the time might cause some tension. 

Going to the same college with your best friend is a fun experience none the less, but I would strongly recommend rooming with someone else. Use college as a time to branch out and meet new people. Also, most universities have services that you can go to if you and your roommate are having issues. These services will either help you two work out a compromise or they will get you a new roommate if things are really that bad.

Thanks for reading!

~Anthony