To Have a Roommate, or Not To Have A Roommate...

That is the question.

When I was in high school, I obviously lived with my parents. When I was in college, my school was 100% residential, which meant that everyone lived in the on-campus dorms...you didn't have a choice. After I graduated, I moved back in with my parents. Sure, I could have moved somewhere by myself, but why on earth would I pay rent when I didn't have to? I knew it was a temporary situation.

If you don't count that short stint I pulled in Santa Barbara where I lived in my family's beach condo, this will be the first time I'm going to be living completely on my own, in a place that's all my own.

Yay!

But here's the thing: do I want my first "alone" living to be done with a roommate?

There's some debate about this issue. In college I had roommates for two years and lived in singles for two years, and in Santa Barbara I lived on my own for 6 months and with roommates for 4 months, so I've pretty much experienced the options, and have formed my own opinions.

There are a ton of positives about having roommates: safety in numbers, someone to split the rent with, social interaction, someone to help keep you accountable with studying/cleaning/etc. Unfortunately, there can also be a ton of negatives. Some are shallow, some are not, but even the small things that bug you can turn into major issues when compounded over time.

For example...when I lived in Santa Barbara, I had a roommate who liked to cook. Awesome, I love to cook! Right? WRONG. She cooked these weird meals that, while they may have been delicious, absolutely STUNK. And I'm not normally sensitive to smells. Whatever she was making would literally smell so strongly that it would make me nauseous and give me a splitting headache.

I didn't ever complain about it, because, hey, maybe it was cultural, maybe she had a special diet, I didn't want to be insensitive or whiny, whatever. And really, if it was just every now and then I could have handled it. But eventually I noticed that she was cooking with these ingredients more and more frequently, giving our house this permanent odor of death. And while this may seem like such an insignificant issue, when you're looking for reasons NOT to go home because you get a headache every time you darken your own doorway, that's not good.

Especially if you're in law school and need a safe haven into which you can escape to relax or do work or whatever.

Or take the situation with my Twenty-Something Nursing Student friend. She moved to a big city where rent was pretty high and she wanted to save a little cash. Perfectly acceptable. She found another student that was starting her program and they hit it off, so they got an apartment together. The way my friend tells it, everything was just peachy at first -- they got along well, had the same circle of friends, were able to relate to each other about school and stress and life -- but then, out of the blue, my friend went home for the weekend and came back to find her apartment emptied of all her roommate's (and their communal) things, with a post-it on the fridge saying, "It's not working, I'm sorry. I don't want to talk about it."

Sounds like an episode of Sex and the City, right?

Anyway, my friend was then stuck paying the lease termination fee ($900), forfeiting her deposit ($400) and moving into a new, more expensive, 1 bedroom apartment. Moral of the story? You never ever ever know how a roommate will work out. Liking someone is one thing, but living together? That can completely change a relationship.

There are some areas of the country where it might be impossible for you to live alone because of cost. Try to make sure that you like your roommate, but aren't BFFs. And make sure that you have similar sleep schedules and noise level expectations. If you're a light sleeper, make sure they don't blare the TV at 11:30 pm, or if you study with background noise make sure that they either won't be there or don't have a problem with it. Also make sure that you have had frank discussions about the possibility/probability/expectations involved in bringing someone of the opposite sex home with you. I know it sounds silly, but it's an important thing to be clear on...you really don't want to listen to someone getting it on (loudly) in the next room while you're boning up on subject matter jurisdiction, do you?

I think that, especially in your 1L, it might behoove you to consider living alone (if at all possible). There is such a crazy learning curve that you don't want to handicap yourself by setting yourself up to deal with a bad living situation and the stress that accompanies it.