I’m in a shared room but don’t panic!

I am in a shared room and yes, I’m alive and well. Every time I tell someone I’m sharing my room the general reaction seems to be: “Really? I won’t do that”. Through this post, I’ll give you some reasons why, if I had to choose my accommodation again, I would still click the box next to “yes, I don’t mind sharing”.

Just a little bit of history first: In a previous post, I’ve mentioned sharing a room and the fact that I have moved from one twin room to another and I’ve insisted more on the reasons there. Now, I’ll only focus on the second shared room in Rootes.

Imagine living alone in a twin room until the middle of term 2 (that was my room mate) and overnight, you wake up having to share a room with a stranger whose luggage, photos, posters are now all over the place (that was me).

However, I like to believe she liked my posters, giving the fact that five hours in my new room, we already went together for a night out, even if we had known each other for basically a day.  That happened right after we were running along the corridors to see who’s the first one to reach the room, yes, in the same day.

However, the next three days we barely exchanged two-three words as I was thinking my sudden presence in the room may not be something she was looking forward to. In the same time, in her mind, there was the same question: “Oh, is she that kind of anti-social person that’s not going to say anything?” The start was therefore confusing, but barre with me as the outcome is as clear as anything but the sky in England.

So here we are, slowly building small talks and being annoyingly over-polite even when asking to switch on/off the light in the room. Thankfully, not even a week in my new room, she accidently spilled her tea on my bed sheets and after panicking for my potential reaction, she saw I was not going to kill her and this finally created some space for us to be more relaxed around each other.

From here on, things only went from good to great. Slowly, a simple “good night” would turn into endless stories with good laughs, emotional memories, and, in their essence, new memories I now cherish. On bad days, I would spontaneously have her hugging me from the back or I would see little treats on my desk for no reason other that “I saw this and I was thinking you may like it”. There are nights when a simple ‘let me show you a song a like’ turn into a night out, but in – and the two of us end up dancing on 80’s jams as if it was a POP night.

Now, when there is so little time for us to spend together in the same room I think of what a great team we’ve made these past months – from caring the trolley around the campus, to caring each other in the trolley; from firstly trying salsa together and being ironed on our feet by almost everyone (because we’re both 1.58 m tall), to sneaking into flat mates’ closets because, again, 1.58; from watching movies on our pajama and crying our eyes out (so cliché, I know), to me teaching her Romanian and her teaching me belly dance.

Regarding privacy, as this is the main reason for students avoiding twin rooms, I can’t complain either. So far, the only argument we’ve had was in regards to the proper way of putting ketchup on crisps. When we study in the room, the only noise I hear comes form the people slamming doors outside or casual laughs if one of us is talking on the phone. When she is talking on the phone, I either have my headphones on or I’m focusing on some work and when I’m on the phone, I mostly speak in Romanian, therefore there is no sense of privacy violation. Even better, we only get to share the bathroom in between the two of us which is a great advantage giving the fact that the room overall is much cheaper than any other in the campus.

To sum up, by ticking that box next to twin room, I met someone who went from being my room mate to being my friend so of course I encourage you to not think about what can go wrong, but what can go right, when seeing the twin room options.