I hope she can work it out with the girl. Unfortunately, I think it's almost an unwritten rule that you have to have some bad roommate experiences in college. I know I sure did. My first roommate was a friend of mine...she didn't go to my high school, but I knew her through activities and thought I'd rather live with someone I knew and liked than some stranger. But when I moved in, she had gotten there first and had taken all the shelf space in the room, and part of my closet, etc. She would help herself to any food or drinks that I had in the room, but told me if I touched hers, heads would roll. She would meet me at the door asking me where I was sleeping that night because she wanted to have a sleepover in the room with her boyfriend and I needed to find somewhere else to stay. She hid booze in the room, which if found, I would have lost my scholarship even though it wasn't mine. I'd be in my room listening to music and she'd come in, turn off my music and put hers on instead. She tried to commit suicide the day before my birthday, so I spent my birthday in the hospital with her. It was just a tough year. And then that summer, I stayed in the dorms rather than going home, and my roommate didn't shower, never cleaned up her stuff. I found her dirty underwear under my bed, plates with half eaten food crusted onto them, etc. She was a super sweet girl, but just unsanitary and the room was always a mess and it smelled. I got a single room after that. I didn't want to deal with roommate issues anymore. I'm very non-confrontational and my mom was so strict I had become a people-pleaser just to survive, and I didn't have the confidence to stand up to them and tell them to shape up. And I'm sure there were things they didn't like about me as a roommate, too. Sometimes it's worth the extra money to not have to fight over space, over decor, over privacy, etc.
Are there a lot of single rooms at K's university? They were in short supply where I went, and I just happened to luck out being able to get one. Over here, finding student housing is difficult all the way around. There's a severe shortage, even WITH roommates. A lot of people go years before they finally get a place and there are people who cheat the system by signing up for one class after they graduate just so they still qualify for student housing because there's a housing crisis in the Netherlands. Only 1% of available properties are affordable for "starters" (people for whom it is their first home). So graduates finish school and can't even get an apartment, so they take a class or something so they can keep their student housing room, which means that someone just starting school can't get a dorm room. It's a vicious cycle. People take YEARS on a waiting list to get a place. When I first moved here, we lived with my in-laws and we were signed up on a waiting list. You could sign in for 3 listings per month and the first person on the list who signed in on that house got it. After 3 years of being on the list, we were still at the very bottom of the list every time. If there were 200 people signed up for a house, we were 198th. We even started signing up on the least desirable places....places in towns without a bus system. One bedroom apartments in poor sections of town....even if there were only 15 people who signed up for that house, we were 12th....and that was 3 years in. We were never going to get a house that way. We got this one off a different list that worked with a lottery system rather than length of time on the list. It's a small house in a low income neighborhood, but beggars can't be choosers. We needed a place and our number was drawn, so we took it. But there was a news item not too long ago that said there were people on waiting lists for over 20 years who STILL couldn't get a place. And you have to be pretty wealthy to afford a place that's not on a waiting list. So it's pretty bad here for housing. So I'm curious about how it is there? Does K have any other options? How many roommates are there in her room/suite?
