Commentary Letter

Dear, Austin Frizzell,

How are things back in Bradenton? I haven't been back in a while; have I missed out on anything good? Orlando is awesome; I go out almost 5 nights a week with Jimmy, Ryan, Matt, and Kayla. It's so fun...everything except for my calc 2 class, which is absolute hell.
Actually, I do have one more problem; I have the strangest roommate. He's messy and leaves his stuff and dishes everywhere, he's the biggest nerd I've ever met, he plays the keyboard and sings simultaneously every day (which is just odd), he sings so loud in the shower that it wakes me up in the morning even though he's on the compete other side of the apartment, and I'm pretty he's gay. He's a really nice guy don't get me wrong, but he is very weird. Whenever we have people over, all he can talk about is these "Skyflakes" which is some type of cracker that isn't salted, and he just raves about them, exclaiming how, "They go great with jam and jelly". What a weird was to start a conversation. While the other two roommates and I buy real food for the apartment, this is all he buys. It's as if he doesn't know how to live on his own. He was obviously very protected growing up and now he doesn't have mommy to buy him real food and follow him around picking up his messes.
I started asking around on our floor and it seems as if almost every room has at least one person that is considered to be a problem. While this isn't a huge problem, there's a lot of kids that have a real problem with their roommates. For instance, Alaina has roommates that have "kegger" parties almost every night and keep her up until about three in the morning. She actually just transferred out of her apartment into my building at the Towers, which got me thinking; How many room transfers are related to roommate issues? Matt has a similar problem. He lives in Lake Claire and has to share a room with someone. He tells me his roommate is a huge "pot-head" who is always smoking in the room and acting like an idiot when he gets high. Poor Matt requested for a transfer, but didn't get it. He didn't want to rat the kid out and get him in trouble with the campus police, he just didn't want to have to live and sleep ten feet away from him. So he complained saying that they were just having general issues and arguing a lot about disagreements. They said that arguments weren't enough to get a transfer and that he was stuck to deal with it. This also got me questioning how many room transfers are related to drug and alcohol usage...
I began asking around in my classes to the students to see if they liked their roommates, how things were working out, etc. I found that the major problem that people had with their roommates wasn't drug and alcohol abuse, but was cleanliness. Some people (like Gabe) love to leave dishes in the sink and always say, "Oh I'll get it later." while the large majority of the student population had conflicting values and likes to keep their area tidy. This generally resulted in some sort of conflict.
To continue my research, I called my mom to ask if she had any roommate issues when she was in college. She told me, "Of course I did, but I learned to deal with it." which made me assume that with experience, dealing with people you don't get along with becomes easier. Accordingly, younger age groups would have the most problems with their roommates, as they have had the least experience dealing with this issue. Yet, five minutes later, she was telling me how there's a new receptionist at her work that she can't stand. This told me that as people age, they learn how to deal with certain individuals, but when a new problematic individual appears, they face an entire new problem. This showed me that tolerance is a universal issue among all age groups that does not have one single solution to it, for tolerating different individuals requires different techniques.
Anyway, I don't want to bore you with my problems. I'm exaggerating a lot anyway, because I love college so far and there are plenty roommates that could be a lot worse...I could be stuck with some thief or in Matt's case some "pot-head", so I'm thankful. Hope you're doing well man, keep me up to date with everything and how you're liking MTI.

See you at Thanksgiving buddy, Austin