As first-year students fill Foggy Bottom residence halls with chatter about their summers and vibrant decor, they also fill Reddit and TikTok with roommate horror stories.
No matter how one finds a roommate, disagreements are inevitable in a shoebox Thurston dorm or an isolated Vern quad. But withstanding the test of time is the true measure of the strength of a roommate pairing. Upperclassmen who continued to live with their first-year roommates throughout their time at GW shared the stories of their roomie match-ups and the secrets to their cohabitating success.
Suitemates by chance, friends for life
International affairs students Eddie Kemelmakher and Tanim Miah said they decided to live together for their first year at GW after becoming close friends in high school. Mathematics major Rohan Singh decided to go the random roommate route and ended up in a four-person suite in Potomac House with Kemelmakher, Miah and political science student Michael Ubis.
Kemelmakher said there was a lot of “mutual hate” in their suite for the first few months due to an ongoing issue of forgetting to unlock the doors to their adjoining bathroom.
“There were a lot of 3 a.m. texts to one another in all caps saying, ‘Can someone please open the bathroom door? I’m gonna, you know, sh*t myself,’” Kemelmakher said.
The suitemates were able to resolve the issue when Singh put a Post-it note in the bathroom reminding everyone to keep the doors unlocked, Miah said.
Over the course of their first year, Singh said he bonded with Kemelmakher and Miah by playing poker and watching movies in their room while Ubis opted for an earlier bedtime. He said these close bonds carried over to their sophomore year, when the group decided to live together again after getting along the prior two semesters. Once the roommates moved to Shenkman Hall, the four of them grew closer by spending more time chatting in their shared living room and kitchen, he said.
“They’re all good people,” Singh said. “It’s hard to be roommates with people that are just not good people. They’re some of the best people I know.”
Singh said the group didn’t always agree on how to arrange or clean the room. Their solution was simple: compromise, Kemelmakher said. He said he might’ve preferred a cleanlier dorm, but he learned that a “give and take” was the best approach, where he pushed his roommates to be neater and they made him messier.
Ubis said in disagreements, he found the “common sense” solution was to respect his roommates’ wishes instead of digging in and harboring resentment toward them. He said he would’ve liked to wear his shoes around the house, but it wasn’t a “hassle” for him to take them off and better tend to his roommate’s desires.
“We always met in the middle ground to some extent,” Ubis said. “Maybe Eddie would have loved it if we cleaned every single day and vacuumed the walls, but we’re at a point now where we can keep it livable.”
A match made in GroupMe
Like many incoming college first-years eager to make quick connections, Maggie Bace said she met Meaghan Shepard on the “roommate Tinder” that is My College Roomie — a roommate pairing application.
“When I saw that on her survey, I was like, ‘Oh this is good’ because I didn’t know anyone even in the D.C. area so I was like, ‘I really need a friend’ and I don’t like putting myself out there a lot so it was nice to have that in common,” Shepard said.
Despite not having many similar interests or music tastes, Shepard said being young women of the same age drives their gab-filled friendship and consequently their communication. Shepard said she and Bace were “lenient” with each other — she said she was more disorganized and would leave things on the floor, but Bace was flexible and didn’t make a fuss about the items strewn about. This sort of mutual flexibility with her roommate made the transition to college easier, Shepard said.
“It’s a really hard time and a hard period of life to adjust to,” Shepard said. “Having to worry about a roommate disagreement is not what you want to be worrying about.”
Bace said one needs common sense to have a strong roommate relationship. She said last semester, she came down with COVID-19 and decided to leave their sophomore year District House double room and stay with a nearby relative as a courtesy to Shepard, even though GW policy no longer requires roommate isolation.
“You don’t particularly owe them anything, but you are living with them, so you kind of do,” Bace said. “Respect the boundaries.”
Living preferences first, friendship second
From a love of “Jane The Virgin” to a shared bond over curl care, philosophy student Antonia Swad and history major Caroline Lovell have plenty in common. But for the two juniors, the compatibility of their living styles was the deciding factor in their decision to room together.
Swad said the pair, who both began at GW in the spring of their first year, met through a dating app-esque GroupMe chat for finding second-semester roommates. After liking each other’s messages in the group chat, the duo FaceTimed to determine their roommate compatibility and found that their shared living preferences set the foundation for their friendship, Swad said.
“I remember us talking about living preferences first and foremost before we got into the friendly stuff because we both knew we can be friends but a friendship can form after we realize we can live comfortably together,” Swad said.
In true GW fashion, Swad and Lovell’s roommate relationship was cemented the first time they met in person after moving to D.C. and had to deal with the not-so-glamorous aspects of moving into their new home. Swad said neither of their GWorld cards worked for their Fulbright Hall room, and after Lovell’s mom called GW Housing, staff recommended that the roommates summon the GW Police Department to “break them into” their room. And having no orientation events like first-years starting in the fall, the pair quickly learned to lean on each other, she said.
Swad said when they first met, she and Lovell had “hard conversations” like what they do when they’re stressed, their policies for having partners over and the degree of mess they allow in their room. She said these chats ensured that when the semester got busier later, they had already built a mutual respect that let them stay sane sharing a space together.
Swad said the pair managed to forge a lasting relationship by immediately diving into exploring the District together. She said having new experiences like day trips to Alexandria and going to museums together connected her with Lovell right off the bat, forging a relationship that has stood the test of time.
“It’s like having a sibling-esque relationship with someone you just met,” Lovell said. “It’s not an easy thing but having conversations is what makes it a little better for us.”
