Thank You For Being (Cooler Than) Normal
April 16th, 2025
Writer: Addie Siembieda
Editor: Hannah Bernardi
The walls on the right side of room 4505, Palmer in Alice Lloyd Hall, were bare except for one spot where the paint had peeled off. The wooden furniture was pushed against a corner, and the closet was small. When I opened the door to my freshman dorm for the first time, however, I didn’t notice any of that. I was more interested in the left side, where my roommate had already started unpacking her boxes–a member of the Michigan Marching Band, she had moved in a few days before me. Though lots of things remained scattered around, her bookshelf was lined with at least 50 colorful rubber ducks. As my parents and I began building furniture and deciding which posters to put on which wall, I couldn’t help but wonder what the next nine months would be like living in a shoebox-sized room with a stranger.
I went into college with a random roommate. I’d opted to live in a Michigan Learning Community, so I felt a little better about going in blind, knowing that my pool of options was smaller. Still, I had heard every horror story under the sun about college roommates. Every day, I would refresh the housing portal, waiting for my contract so I could finally know the name of the person I’d be sleeping five feet away from. Every day, I would beg:
Please let my roommate be normal.
When I finally found out I’d be living with a girl named Juju, we exchanged contact information through the university housing portal. We set up a time to meet during orientation. Our conversation went well, and I felt a lot better once I’d concluded that she wasn’t an axe murderer. We had laid out our expectations for what living together would be like, but I still couldn’t shake the looming nervousness.
I barely saw Juju for the first few weeks of college. With five back-to-back football games, she was always either at rehearsal or getting ahead on work. We spoke every day, of course, but never got a meal together. My parents had told me it was okay to not be best friends with my roommate – simply coexisting was enough.
Juju and I were amazing at coexisting. We both stuck to the rules we had agreed upon that day at lunch: ask before borrowing things, be quiet when the other person is sleeping, and absolutely nothing is to happen during the hour of 4 AM. As the semester went on, I realized just how lucky I was. My friends were having all kinds of roommate problems, from hearing TikTok out loud at two in the morning to being kicked out of the room on a weekday to have a guy over. Every time I’d hear a story, I’d come home in the evening and simply say, “Thank you for being normal,” to which Juju would respond, “What did you hear this time?”. Together, we’d laugh at others’ incompatibility and incompetence.
I don’t remember exactly when our random hour-long talks started. Probably around the same time that I put up my corkboard and she hung her band sorority’s letters. Maybe it was when we finally conquered the Keurig or stuck the gel window clings on our window. Or maybe it was the day that we decided to put googly eyes on everything from the lamp to the card reader on the door handle. Whenever it happened, there came a day when we would start talking before bed at 11:30 and wouldn’t stop until 2:30 in the morning. During one of these talks, I stopped thanking her for being normal. Instead, I started saying, “Thank you for being cool.”
Juju and I have seen each other in ways no one else has. We’ve listened to each other cry, cough, and break down. We’ve seen each other sick, bleeding, and dead tired. Without really trying, we formed this closeness from sheer proximity. Even though, to this day, we’ve only hung out outside of the room once, I can confidently say that she is one of my closest friends. In the same way we turned the empty walls of 4505 Palmer into a home, we turned our random pairing into a genuine friendship.
Right before winter break, Juju hung a whiteboard by the door and wrote, “What are you grateful for today?”. We’ve used the whiteboard to write down our daily gratitudes, a practice that has both helped us individually and made us feel closer on days we barely see each other. So, to Juju, I’m grateful the random roommate system brought me to you. Thank you for being cooler than normal. Thank you for being you.
