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

