T
he nerves reminded me of the feel-
ing you get before a job interview.
With a light flutter in my stom-
ach, I swung my backpack over my shoulder
and walked into the East Quad dining hall. I
spotted the girls almost immediately, the five
of them giggling over half-eaten pizza and
shredded brussels sprouts, their close friend-
ship apparent. Approaching them, I jokingly
thought to myself, Should I have brought a
resumé?
It was fall of my freshman year and these
five girls, all already friends and one of whom
lived in my hall, had invited me to dinner to
“get to know them better,” ssbefore we all de-
cided to sign onto a lease for a house on East
University Avenue the following year.
At the time, this process seemed only nat-
ural — of course, before deciding to live to-
gether, one should make sure anyone joining
in who isn’t your friend is at least somewhat
compatible with the group. But it’s difficult
to escape the uncomfortable social dynam-
ics that occur among college freshmen try-
ing to find their people while living out the
prophecy listed in so many movies and TV
shows about young people: The need for a
big group of friends with whom to get drunk,
share deep heart-to-hearts, cook dinner and
have board game nights. Like many fresh-
men, I wanted this kind of relationship, and
I figured the easiest way to achieve it was
through shared space — I figured, if we were
living together, the prophecy would simply
fulfill itself.
Yet, it was only November, and I had
barely been on campus long enough to fos-
ter the kind of connections necessary for the
“Best Girl Group Ever” experience. Enter the
pseudo-vetting process that made me doubt
if I was cool enough to warrant living with.
Ultimately, I lived with those girls during
my sophomore year, and while we shared
some of those movie-magic moments of tail-
gating on our front porch together or watch-
ing The Bachelor on Monday nights, we also
shared moments of arguments over politics,
tension over chore responsibilities and the
genuine irritation that comes with constant-
ly sharing a space, especially in a high-stress
environment like college. And whatever
friendship we had somewhat forced upon
ourselves wasn’t enough to make those nega-
tive moments worth working through.
It’s not uncommon for people to jump
into leases with people they don’t know very
well; it’s part of the nature of the Ann Arbor
housing market, whose compressed timeline
basically demands you sign a lease very early
in the fall semester. What follows is a type of
forced commitment to people who you may
drift away from by the time the lease actu-
ally begins. While this may not seem like a
huge deal in the face of so many other hous-
ing issues, having a home on campus where
you feel comfortable, supported and safe is
crucial to happiness as a student and person.
The year after my seven-person East Uni-
versity house, I lived in another big house
with six girls, only two of whom I was origi-
nally friends with. While my relationship to
these girls ended up stronger than the oth-
ers, I still faced the same uncertainties as the
year prior. I was still invited into their space;
it was still on me to be worth befriending.
Both years I felt I had to juggle the pressure of
getting close with my roommates and want-
ing ownership of the spaces that we shared.
This created an odd contortion: I couldn’t
be fully autonomous in the space, because
it wasn’t mine to begin with. Maybe it was
just a poster in our living room that irritated
me, or maybe it was the constant pile-up of
dirty dishes and browning sink water. Maybe
it was the feeling of being a stranger in my
own living room, since none of the furniture
was mine or the guests were never familiar.
These were things I felt I couldn’t change, or
even ask to change, because as an “add-on”
to the house I didn’t want to jeopardize our
roommate-friendships. There was an unspo-
ken hierarchy and, as a naive college student,
I blindly followed it.
A home is supposed to be a place of peace
and comfort; it’s supposed to allow reprieve
from the stressful, drama-filled world of
college. It’s meant to be the place you re-
turn to after a long day of trudging from
classroom to library to club meetings. It’s
meant to comfort you after a tense conver-
sation with an ex, or a first date gone wrong.
It’s meant to be a private place to cry, think,
sleep and recharge. In pre-coronavirus life,
there were seldom places on campus where
you could be alone — I once had a break-
down about a bad economics exam grade in
a supply closet in the Ugli and tried to take
a quick nap on the colorful couches in the
Fishbowl. These moments, while funny in
hindsight, are not normal — I should have
been able to process those emotions freely
and in my own home. I should have had the
time and space to work through my feelings
in a healthy, private way.
The need to decompress from the stress
of life is only one aspect of a positive home
experience, and the opposite is just as im-
portant — that the home does not cause
more stress. It’s not just a challenge to live
with people you might not be close with —
at this age, cramming a big group of people
in a small space is almost asking for conflict
and drama (we’ve all seen enough variations
of reality TV shows like Big Brother to know
this). Of course, conflict is a natural aspect
of adulthood and learning how to deal with
it in the context of roommates is important
for self-growth. But chronic or reemerging
unresolved tension within your own home
means you have no place to unwind. Anytime
issues arose between my roommates and me,
I would either escape to my parents’ house
for the night (they live in Ann Arbor) or to
my boyfriend’s apartment. This form of es-
capism never solved the reason for the con-
flict and redefined my house as a place to be
avoided, a place of stress. It made me reliant
on other people’s spaces for comfort — again,
I lacked autonomy.
Now in my senior year, I finally found this
autonomy. It took two years of both trying to
fulfill the friendship prophecy and scram-
bling to secure leases to finally settle on a
two-bedroom apartment with a close friend,
my own room and ownership even over our
shared spaces. It took two trial runs to learn
that the idea of the close girl group that does
everything together while never having is-
sues is exactly that: just an idea. Friendships
come naturally; they can’t be doctored just
through sharing a home. And like many other
aspects of college, from dating to partying to
professional development, there is no single
prophecy that one should aim to fulfill be-
cause rarely will we achieve it. In actuality,
the beauty of college is tucked between the
mistakes we make and those who help guide
us through them, including ourselves.
And yet, I don’t blame myself or any other
student who feels naive for entering a liv-
ing situation with acquaintances based on
social or timing reasons. The systems, both
that of the housing market and that of the
American college experience, which puts
immense pressure on students to have 100
close friends and constant fun, are respon-
sible for the awkward maneuvering we must
do to both have a place to live and one that
we enjoy. College is stressful and wonderful
and full of so many changes, and a safe home
is the one constant we so desperately need.
And while it would be nice to raise a glass
with five other familiar, loyal faces, it’s even
better to break the prophecy in half, pav-
ing way for your own messy, unpredictable,
breathless and beautiful path.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
14 — Wednesday, October 14s, 2020
statement
Sharing more
than a space
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT MANAGING EDITOR
statement
ILLUSTRATIONS BY EILEEN KELLY