Friday, May 8, 2015

That One Roommate that is Passive Aggressive

Whenever the subject of college comes up, everyone goes to the "it will be the time of your life" , "college is the best years of your life", "you will finally be able to take the classes you like", and it's true for the most part. What people don't often mention is the conflicts that could arise. The most popular of these conflicts, roommates. Most people don't know what its like living with a complete stranger and some of the difficulties that can come with it. My freshmen year I was lucky and got along with my roommate just fine. That was not the case this past fall semester. 
I decided to live in north quad. In north quad its six people to a suite, I was going to be sharing a room with a friend but the other four girls were going to be complete strangers. I guess I was right about feeling nervous to live with four strangers because soon into the semester conflicts started to arise. I tend to be a person who likes to put things out in the open to avoid tension and making the problem bigger. That was not the case for my suite mate that the conflict was with. She was a person to avoid confrontation and be nonverbal about the issues that arose. She had a passive aggressive way of solving issues, she would leave notes instead of talking to you in person. Because of her passive aggressive personality she would get intimidated when myself or other two of my suite mates would confront her. She would avoid eye contact and become flustered when confronted. Our way of handling problems and personalities were just polar opposites with mine and the four other girls so she eventually decided to move out at the end of the semester. 
Maybe we could have found ways to meet in the middle and work out any issues in ways that both parties would be comfortable, but after an incident over thanksgiving break when she was the only one to stay and the place was a complete mess. When I tried talking to her about the issue and told her that she should clean it because she was the only one that had stayed over break she rebottled saying that she was busy and had some difficult things going on at the moment. That statement she made really triggered me because it made it seem that she was saying her personal life was more important or more difficult than everyone else's, but she didn't know anyones story and they could be going through difficult times too. After that I decided that there was no point in trying to solve things with her because she always made herself seem like the victim.

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