Uni 101: On Sharing Space (Types of Female Roommates)

Unless your family is buoyant enough to afford to rent a room for you off-campus, you’ll probably share living spaces with others – strangers and friends alike.  Here’s the thing about friends sometimes: You might love them and be compatible with them when you are not living together but when you move in together, you find out how incompatible you both are. Sometimes, friends can’t live together because of the varying differences in their lifestyles. Finding the perfect roommate(s) is harder than finding unicorns. People are not perfect; we all have our flaws. The way we live differs from the way someone else lives so, in many ways, there’ll be clashes between roommates. It’s almost inevitable. 

Types of Roommates on Campus

There are different types of roommates one can find in universities. The hostels can be like scenes from Nollywood movies riddled with various, sometimes amusing, or annoying characters. Check out the type you are:

1. The Bookworm:

This type of roommate resides in the library. She’s always gone, to the library, night class or church. You’d think living with her will be no problem until she starts judging you for not being “serious” enough with your studies. And if she’s a final year student? Bigger problem because she’ll expect everyone around her to be more like her. It’s all about books and books and high GP for her. It’s annoying.

2. The Beggi-beggi roommate:

This type of roommate does not ever have everything she needs for school even when she has everything. She’s so stingy with her belongings but expects everyone around her to help her out always. They’re the type that buys only raw rice and begs for every other thing needed to cook the rice. Their begging skills are topnotch and puts Adaku from Jenifa’s diary to shame. They’re the experts in begging. Best to avoid these kinds of people. Set them straight from the beginning; let them know that you are not interested in charity cases.

3. The dirty roommate:

Living with people like this is a hassle. They mess up the room and leave for class. Their period blood stains the bed-sheets and they don’t bother changing the sheets. They use the toilet without flushing properly EVER. Fighting with them is a waste of time because they never learn. It’s just the way they’re built.

4. The one with the weird cooking recipes:

This type of roommates fills your room with weird smells coming from her cooking pot. You can never understand the kind of food she cooks. It tastes weird, it smells weird. It makes you wanna runoff from your room every time she starts cooking.

5. The one with lots of man visitors:

She doesn’t care that it’s a ladies room. She always invites her numerous men friends over. You might be coming out from the bathroom with only your short, pink towel tied around your chest and there’s one of her men sitting inside the room as if he’s just waiting for you. You start wondering how to wear your clothes in front of the man. It’s annoying. Of course, she’ll deflect and tell you it’s not a big deal. She’s so insensitive.

6. The shameless thief:

From your shoes, bags, foodstuffs, water, toothpaste, money, etc., nothing is safe from this kind of roommates. They steal everything, they’re after all klepto; they can’t help it. They take everything without permission. They are such a nuisance. Best avoid them. 

7. The religious sister:

These are the deeper life, born again sisters in the lord that will frustrate your life if you don’t believe in their ridiculous church policies. You’ll spend a lot of significant amount of time arguing with them why wearing trousers and fixing nails are simple, innocent gestures. They won’t change your mind; you won’t change theirs so why bother? You’ll learn how to put up with their constant judging and try to hide your real self from them so as to be left alone.

8. The one who is never around:

This one is proper Ijele (waka traveler). She’s always on the move and never ever around. She shows in once in a blue moon, probably to carry more of her stuff and disappear again. She’s the least troublesome type of roommate. You don’t have to worry about her.

9. The one that is always trying to change you:

Introverts find it harder to fit into the society. If you prefer staying at home, there’ll always be that extrovert roommate trying to change you, to get you to become more “fun”. She’s always forcing you to long night parties and setting you up with her “fu*kboy” friends. Between this kind of roommate and the religious types, I don’t know who is more annoying.

10. The wahala roommate:

This one is just plain irritating. It’s always one trouble or the other with her. She’s always looking for ways to start a fight. She’s always fighting. It’s in her blood, it gives her some sort of oxygen. The best way to deal with someone like this is to move out. Unless you can match her “madness”, please move out.

To effectively share spaces with any kind of roommate, it’s important some ground rules are set first. Rules help keep everyone in check. If you don’t want your things to be touched without your permission, say so. If you don’t want to be bothered by 2. am to open the door for your drunken, party-obsessed roommate, say so. Communicate your feelings; storing them inside you will make them fester. Let your rage and dissatisfaction out. Don’t hesitate to complain to whoever’s in charge of the hostel/or house when your roommates step out of the line. Know that you’d have to compromise at some point. Life is all about compromises. Finally, your roommate doesn’t have to be your best friends; you just need to be decent enough to put up with all her excesses.

P.s: The roommate list is exclusively for females alone. I’ll make the list for male roommates sometime soon. Send in your own list if you wish to [email protected].