Reasons to Live Alone

By Hilary Van Hoose on March 13, 2013

Over the last year, I’ve had living situations with 8 house-mates (at the Village in UCSC), 3 apartment-mates (at grad student housing in UCSC), a single roommate (at what is normally grad housing over the summer in UCLA), and no roommates at all (in Paris).

I liked having a sort of instant-friend aspect of the roommate system, but it lacked privacy and a degree of freedom. The apartment-mate system was a bit of a nightmare, but that’s just because my roomies and neighbors were more unruly than I was ready for. I like the Village pretty well so far. There’s enough privacy and it’s usually pretty quiet. Not everyone pulls their weight with the chores, but the parsing up of duties is light enough anyway. Living alone required some extra care (like really remembering my keys when I left, and I was off campus there so the local crime made me kind of nervous), but it definitely had the most advantages, in my opinion.

Each kind of housing has its own pros and cons. Here’s my short list:

ROOMMATE PROS:

• Someone to talk to or watch movies with when you’re bored
• Safety in numbers
• If you’re roomed with a friend or someone in the same major, a resource for help with projects and stuff you’re interested in
• A convenient person to ask to accompany you to parties or events
• Someone to call a doctor if you get really sick
• If you’re off-campus, someone to split the cost of rent
• Someone to unlock the door if you lock yourself out

NON-ROOMMATE PROS:

• Safety from roomie’s cold/flu germs
• Ability to sleep and be awake whenever you want without inconveniencing others
• No waiting to use the bathroom
• Hot water in the shower whenever you want it
• Freedom to talk on Skype or cell phone in any room (if there’s more than one) without annoying people
• No cleaning up someone else’s messes on a regular basis, and especially on move-out day
• No snoring, or lights on, or cell phone rings, when you’re trying to sleep
• No cosmetic powder coating furniture or bathroom countertops, or chemical smells from perfume/air “freshener”
• No dealing with others’ drug/alcohol use problems (like being jarred awake by loud vomiting at 2am)
• No funny smells
• Nobody leaves empty toilet paper rolls at the toilet without replacing them
• No overflowed pools from the shower flooding the bathroom floor
• No wads of hair sitting on the shower drain
• No accidental, or otherwise, food theft
• No plugged in hair straighteners sitting in pools of water by the bathroom sink
• No distractions from concentrating on work
• No friends/boyfriends that stay all day and virtually all night without your permission (sometimes accompanied by loud carnal noises for long periods)

So far, I’ve found that the reasons for living alone outweigh the possible advantages of having roommates – as a student anyway. After graduation, I concede that the cost of rent may sway my opinion. For me, the ideal situation would be on-campus (to be connected to the school community, eligible for more financial aid, in the safety net of school housing supervisors, and around my peers), but a single studio apartment would be nice too (because roommates and housemates can be trying at times, and because it would award greater independence).

What’s your take on the roommate issue?

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