Tutorial Tuesday: How to Survive College Housing

There's few things I love more than Krispy Kremes but hearing about other people's roommate drama is definitely up there.  Her boy toy drinks your OJ?  She leaves her dirty socks in the bathroom?  He never chips in for beer?  If you don't have anything nice to say about your roommate, come sit next to me because I'm all ears and I'm a professional trash-talker.

Luckily, my roommate days are long gone.  Never again will some innocent person be subjected to sharing a 9'x14' room with me and my moody morning habits and I think we can all say a "hallelujiah" for that (except my future husband...sucks to be him right??).  But during my time as a girl, dorm resident, and citizen of a college apartment complex I've become kind of a Dr. Phil in roommate and neighbor issues.  Don't get me wrong, having roommates is so fun.  You have a live-in social life so you virtually never have to leave your house, you can make them pick out all your clothes, plus you can do fun things like wine nights and farmers market trips.  They may even be your future bridesmaids, but every time you have more than one girl there is bound to be drama.

Let's start with your crazy freshman roommate.  Maybe she's been hiding your coffee filters to make you late in the morning or "accidentally" leaving and locking the door while you shower, key-less and clothes-less.  The first thing you need to do is bitch about it to everyone but her.  If you're lucky you have a friend like me who will take your side no matter what ("What?  She emptied your trash can for you?  That must mean she's sexting your boyfriend behind your back...Slore.")  Then, once word finally gets back to her that you've been running your trap all over campus about how she farts in her sleep, you can have a Showdown.  The Showdown accomplishes nothing except you both get to scream at each other and then wait out the rest of the semester being fake-polite and passive-aggressive.  It's all part of the college experience.

Subtlety and willingness to share your nail polish are two ingredients of great roommates.

Then you have the noisy neighbors.  Staunch supporters of Messed Up Monday, Tequila Tuesday, Wasted Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday and weekends these party pups are apparently in school for reasons other than, oh, you know...GETTING A DEGREE.  Unfortunately for you, they live just above you on the other side of that 6 inch, uninsulated floor.  Fortunately for you, there are options.

1. Get a BB gun.
2. Get a louder sound system than them and become the louder neighbors.  First they'll be stunned, then it will escalate.
3. Call the police.
4. Start dating one of them and use your sex appeal to persuade them to keep it down.

Once, I lived in a house with 30 other people.  Besides it being the nastier than the inside of a porta-potty bowl, I learned a lot about sharing.  By that I mean I learned that when it comes to food no one shares.   Behind every seemingly honest person is a sneaky little thief who will take one Pop-Tart out of the package or eat the last 10 precious scoops of Nutella.  The only way to combat this is to eat nasty food.  Why do you think I drink soy milk?  It may taste like Vaseline and have a strange texture but at least I'm the only one suffering through it.  Sleep with one eye open and in front of the refrigerator.

I saw you looking at my Lucky Charms.

The only other pieces of advice I can give you are as follows:

• If you are a female, invest in an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner, or else collect all the hair on your carpet by hand and make a wig.
• If you are a male, make sure you are the alpha male in your household so you don't have to do all the cleaning (this is what I've observed, anyway).
• If you are a human, get ear plugs.

And above all, don't start a shaving cream prank war with someone in your house, unless you like the way it feels all over your body as you sleep.

Seriously, not kidding about this one.