Not everyone enters college dreaming of forming life-long friendships. For me, the idea that some people forged such intense connections that they would later become each other’s bridesmaids was odd. You were in, and then you were out.
MSU SURVIVAL GUIDE: Finding freshman year friends takes time
But I can understand the average freshman stalking Class of 2030 pages cherry-picking best friends and scouring the internet for dorm floorplans in anticipation of August.
Before starting at MSU, the summer is filled with nostalgic retellings and sage wisdom sweet enough to make you puke. Strip away all the sentimentality, and the message is always the same: the first month of university sets the tone for the next four years of your life, for better or for worse.
There's Welcome Week, the formation of the fleeting freshman year friend group that haunts campus forever, the clubs that get ditched halfway through and, most importantly, the stranger you share your shoebox-sized dorm with.
My roommate found me off of a half-completed MyCollegeRoomie profile where I spent more time clicking all the random fun buttons than honestly answering questions about my willingness to clean a toilet.
Her profile was scarce, so I typed her name into Google as we awkwardly conversed for the next 30 minutes. MyCollegeRoomie had our compatibility rating at 66%.
She said she loved her digital camera and liked to clean. Her only tagged photo was a Roblox University admissions post. Google revealed no criminal record. Normal enough.
It's difficult trying to picture a life with someone based off of a short profile listed on a random website. It's both too much and too little. There's no telling whether these strangers are willing to hike back from the MSU library at midnight, wake up early to tailgate on a Saturday and then buy you Gatorade while fending off the Sunday scaries.
In my case, 66% wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful either. So, in the backseat of a friend’s car, the girl from Grand Haven became my roommate.
If you know who your roommate is before move-in, it might help to talk. Not for us. The rest of June, July and August slipped away without any weekly chats or attempts to get to know each other. Just the occasional logistical update: “I’m bringing a microwave.”
I moved in first. Within an hour, my parents managed to knock her bed over sideways on the tiled Holmes dorm room floor. Good omen.
Freshmen are encouraged to put their best foot forward by attending all the freshman orientation activities and swarming around club tables at Sparticipation. Just know, nothing will happen to you if you don't.
There's enormous pressure to make the most of Welcome Week, as though missing one event means missing your chance forever. I ignored most of it. I didn’t keep my door open so friendly stragglers could stop by. I decorated my dorm by making my bed, plugging in the microwave and going straight to sleep.
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I spent most of my time hopping between the dorms of high school friends and a girl from Instagram in between classes. I had a job at The State News, where I knew one other freshman and tried my hardest not to feel out of place.
My roommate and I were fine. Awkward, but fine. She wasn’t a stranger, but she wasn’t a friend yet either. We didn’t have that instant bond where you stayed up until 3 a.m. talking about everything and anything under the dim lamp light.
That wouldn’t happen until November.
It’s hard to describe how it happened, just that it did. Instead of saying good night and facing the wall, I turned over and spilled my guts out.
Most people don't start getting comfortable until spring semester, so don't jump the gun when things aren't going to plan. Sometimes friendships don't arrive during Welcome Week. Instead, they show up months later, after enough ordinary nights have passed.
I went out with my roommate for the first time in the spring. We introduced each other to our friends. We showed love the only way MSU freshmen know how, by occasionally using one of our coveted Combo-X-Changes on each other. Every night was spent answering absurd hypotheticals and wandering down the hall for Hot Cheetos from the vending machines at 2 a.m.
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Sophomore year, it was impossible to imagine living with anyone else. Somehow, among all our friends who had paired with high school best friends or Instagram meet-cutes, we stood the test of time.
My family — who have known me for 19 years — still can’t stomach the string of alarms starting at 8 a.m. in 10 minute intervals to wake me up at 1 p.m. My roommate and I extend our sincerest apologies to our fellow Wonders Hall residents, who told us our respective alarms began to harmonize after hour one.
I had grown so accustomed to her that during winter break, it took me a week to stop turning over in bed and expecting her to be there, waiting across the room for whatever stray thought I had.
My roommate makes MSU bearable, but it took months for us to reach that point. We’re living together again this fall, but a part of me mourns the fact that we’re no longer in a dorm, talking until we force ourselves to stop.
Instead, we have a beautifully decrepit college house with an enviable address secured in a lottery against 300 other people. I have three roommates now — all kind, ambitious and my future bridesmaids.
Every freshman hears the same advice — an experience so unifying that it qualifies as its own college acceptance letter. It's easy to brush it off, but some clichés stick around because they're true. Finding your people takes time. Give yourself the chance, and you will.
