Just How Did You manage To Get Into College?

[Greenday]

Hey Greenday, ever found your wet clothes on top of the dryer while someone else used up your drying time to dry their clothes? Yeah.

Not yet, but I've already made plans for the person who makes that mistake. I'm going to put all their clothes in a bag, dump them out behind my dorm, pour a lil gas on them, and start a bonfire. In the event that I'm not able to pull that off, I'll just donate it all to charity.

[hotelnpa]

I've just started going back to college again after a several year lapse because of family illness and other obligations. But I remember my roommate from my first shared apartment.

I shared the apartment with a female friend of mine I knew since I was a kid. Gosh, she was such a pig. I never knew such a petite woman could eat so much food. Judging by the wrappers she left all over the kitchen and living room, she liked Wendy's, KFC, and Long John Slivers. Most of the time, she would never pick up after herself. Since we shared a bathroom, she would leave her feminine products out in view. (I would think most females would want that underneath the sink or in their own bedroom drawers.) While that isn't bad, she would just throw the used pads down the toilet (I had to call the plumber alot) or throw the whole thing without wrapping it in tissue in the wastebasket with the topside exposed (gross I know).

Her boyfriend was just as much as a pig. I don't think he bathed regularly based on his greasy hair and noticeable body odor. When he visited once, I saw him throw out a fast food bag in the apartment parking lot. Real classy. What she saw in him, I don't know. Every once in a while, they would procreate and I find used condoms in the couch.

Although she was pretty good about paying her half of the rent, she wasn't so good on helping out with the utilities or groceries.

That was a very stressful time for me because in the middle of the semester, my father fell ill and eventually passed away. Then other family members got sick. My childhood dog died also. Not a very memorable time.

Now that I am going back to school, I have my own place and things are a little more calm.

[LadyAndreca]

In college, I had to teach my boyfriend how to do laundry. Before he met me, he'd been bringing it home every weekend. Come to think of it, he STILL does that, he just calls it an excuse to visit his family. (Doesn't bother me, really...we don't have to pay the laundromat and I always get scheduled for closing Sundays anyway.)

My first roommate after college was hell though. She was the only daughter of immigrants who managed to achieve the American dream (her father was some sort of chemist/inventor and held some sort of major patent) and used it to give their little girl everything they'd dreamed of having themselves. My sister and I were lower-middle-class army brats from a family of seven...we'd been doing our own laundry since second grade, cooking since middle school, and doing most chores around the house since we were old enough to help out.

K could do her own laundry. That was the only thing she could do.

She did not know how to clean. I woke up at least once from roaches crawling on me, and I kept my room food-free!

She did not know how to go grocery shopping. She also outright refused to go with me because I wouldn't let her throw anything that caught her eye in the cart. My sister was more patient...but if she tried to go alone, with a list, every five minutes we'd get a call... "Why do we need tomato sauce? Are you suuuuuure? What size? What brand? Well...if you say so..." *click* *ring* "Hey...why do we need tuna? Are you suuuuuuuure?..." For every. Single. Item.

She could not cook. Most of the time, she outright refused to, until she figured out that we couldn't cook Chinese like her mother could make. Unfortunately for my sister and I, neither could she. I mean...if you're going to make homemade soup from the leftover chicken carcass...take the bones out before you serve it...

She couldn't wash dishes. She used the skin condition she had as an excuse not to do them, but the few times she tried we had to rewash them anyway.

She had no grasp of the idea that using more electricity meant a higher electric bill. She'd never turn her computer off, had a space heater in the winter and an AC in the summer, but would bitch at my sister and I for the bill being so high.

She also had a distinct lack of common courtesy or common sense, doing things like inviting male friends she'd met online but never in person over to stay for a week WITHOUT TELLING US. She'd broken one of my soup mugs, and thrown away the pieces and lied to my face when I asked her about it, and four of my sister's twelve glasses by the end of that year.

*sigh* Wow. I can really get going about her when someone gets me started. Sorry 'bout the rant.

[cloudiko]

This isn't necessarily a bad roommate story, just a funny one.
My sophmore year of college, I had three roommates and we lived in a quad room that had no kitchen. Therefore, we were forced to be on the University's crappy meal plan, but on every floor there was a kitchen in case you wanted a break from the slop.
So, very frequently my roommates and I would cook something down there, even if it was just microwaving some ramen. However, one day my roommate, B, decided to pop some popcorn....and somehow she couldn't figure out how long it needed to cook for. So she set the microwave for four minutes. It was hillarious - she burned her popcorn and caused the fire alarm to go off. The entire building had to be evacuated! To this day, we don't allow her to cook anything on her own. By the way, her excuse for not knowing how long to cook her popcorn was that "the microwave didn't have a popcorn button!"

Sometimes it sucks going to a private college. I am dirt poor, and like the rest of you guys had to learn how to cook, clean and do my laundry in middle school. I had to teach several friends how to do laundry my freshman year of college. I also had to show another friend how to set up her lamp. It was painful, to say the least. At the end of every semester, my roommates and I get into an argument about the stupidity of purchasing boxes from the Student Life office when we could just walk to the grocery store and get boxes for free! And this term I spent quality time arguing with my roommates about needing to put bleach in our dishwater so we all wouldn't get sick. (We don't have a dishwasher).

Ooh, sorry to get ranty on you guys. This topic just drives me nuts!

[HawaiianShirts]

Hey Greenday, ever found your wet clothes on top of the dryer while someone else used up your drying time to dry their clothes? Yeah.

Been there. Just a week ago. Actually caught the monkey red-handed, too, because I realized I'd forgotten a dryer sheet and was going back down to throw one in. He had all of my wet clothes on top of the dryer and was throwing his in. I got the "Oh, were these yours?" response as he hastily pulled his stuff back out and found another dryer. Some BS about being in a hurry, thinking they were already dry, thinking they were somebody else's, and so on. I might have been able to buy that in a big laundromat with lots of people, but this is in my apartment complex. There are three washing machines and three dryers. This guy and I were the only ones doing laundry that day.

And stupid roommates? I can add to that list.

Jeremy thought he was smart by charging all his bills to his credit card so he'd only have to write one check each month. It would appear that math was not his strong suit, though. He went into collections, but not before buying a nice new TV, new computer, and a $700 remote control car. We had the collection agency call, and Rob and I (there were the three of us in one place) had a good laugh about Jeremy being in debt, especially because he kept bragging about all his new stuff. Yeah, we let the agency reps know how to contact him. That same night, this genius was riding around in the bed of a neighbor's truck, having his little remote control car follow them down the road. The truck had to stop and back up suddenly for something-or-other, and the little car got smashed.

Then there was my wife's former roommate. I may have mentioned her before. She wants to go into film school. She also wants to do volunteer church work in a foreign country. She has NO concept of money. She had a cell phone. She ran up her minutes and didn't pay her bills. Her phone got shut off. She decides she has to have a cell phone. But instead of paying the bills and reactivating her service, she signed up for a new phone with another company and, by the time I met her, was already a month behind in her bills and said, "It's already late. I'll just pay it next month." She got a campus job at $7 an hour reading textbooks aloud into a recorder for the Students with Disabilities office to use. She quit after one week because it wasn't paying her enough and didn't leave enough time in the day for her film projects. That, and the girl put spaghetti sauce on EVERYTHING, including, one day when I was visiting, a grilled tuna sandwich.

[Gurndigarn]

Y'know, I'm becoming gladder and gladder that I chose a school that was exceptionally calm. We had our problems, but most people had a clue how to survive without mommy and daddy.

(I chose it because it was the cheapest school with a national reputation that I could find... but the atmosphere became a very nice plus for me.)

[myswtghst]

On paying for college...
On that subject, I will say that it has more to do with parental attitude than the simple fact that they're paying for college. I had friends whose parents paid for everything and were never made to do anything who failed out. While I had my father paying for over half my college experience, he was doing so under the condition that if I lost the scholarships covering the rest (all academic, so I had to keep my grades up) I'd be paying the difference myself. I also have had a job since I was 16, and did volunteer/babysitting work before that, along with plenty of chores. Which was nice, as I knew how to cook/clean/do laundry once out on my own.

On laundry...
I live in an apartment building with two washers and two dryers downstairs. To this day, I dislike leaving my laundry in there on it's own, even though I'm just upstairs and the door is locked to people who don't live in my building. In college, in the dorms and at the laundromat, I *never* left my laundry unattended - I just brought headphones and a book down with me. I still sometimes bring my laundry to my parents - it's free and safe there.

On cleanliness...
I had multiple roommates in college with no knowledge of how to clean. One suitemate thought wiping down the bathroom with a dry papertowel constituted cleaning. Another roommate left a hotpot with mac'n'cheese in it so long I thought it was going to start speaking. I eventually chucked the whole thing, six colors of mold and all, down the garbage chute. Same roommate never once cleaned our room, only time it ever got cleaned that I didn't do it? Her mom came to town and did it while roomie was laid up with kidney stones.

It was often impressive to me, given how I've often been given a hard time because I come from a good area, am upper middle class, and have been pretty spoiled, just how bad kids could be. Yeah, my parents spoiled me, but not to the point that I didn't know how to do anything for myself, or to the point that I *expected* others to do things for me.