Comments on: Roommate Time

By: jennifer

jennifer — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:28:50 +0000

As the daughter of a telephone engineer, I suppose I should have known what a WATS line was but I don’t think you ever threw that term around at home!

By: BILL CRABB

BILL CRABB — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:17:20 +0000

I come from the dinosaur age.
WATS: wide area telephone service, the beginning of 800 numbers.

By: jennifer

jennifer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:53:29 +0000

Lindsay, so pride meant you wouldn’t ask what “psyched” meant, same as I would not ask what a WATS line meant!
Jeane, didn’t Andy go to Penn? You might have two kids at East Coast Ivy League schools….a long way from Cha Cha Cha Road.
MG, did you find out what WATS means?
Elizabeth, being ditched by a roommate must have been awful. Fortunately you rebounded nicely.
Emily, Ian finally got an email tonight. He has two roommates – I guess they have a triple with a double room and a single. Ian will be in the double. Offhand, he remembered nothing else, including the other kids’ first names!

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:12:39 +0000

My roomate (Nancy) called in 1976 and kept asking if I was “psyched”? I had no idea what she meant.

By: Jeane

Jeane — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:42:08 +0000

Didn’t like my freshman roommate at all, but it was mutual. We had nothing in common other than gender. She wasn’t happy at Denison– transferred after freshman year, so I doubt she would have have gotten along with anyone.

Visited U of Pennsylvania with my almost high school senior son, Gabriel, today. The Admissions rep was an alum (that she seemed an absolute dodo is another story), who talked about bonding with her roommate before they ever met. Gabe asked me how since the woman is 60ish, and had clearly attended college pre-Facebook. Back in the 20th century, I explained, we used something called the US Postal Service!

By: MemeGRL

MemeGRL — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:50:49 +0000

And PS–I still don’t know what a WATS line is! Googling now….

By: MemeGRL

MemeGRL — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:50:16 +0000

@Emily–after many studies, the place we went discovered smoker/non and kosher/not were the only two questions that made any difference in roommate retention rates! Maybe with Match.com algorithms this has gotten better but at the time, they realized they were wasting time trying to match on anything else.

I got my roommate assignment on a Friday, and my parents asked, “Well? Did you call her?” when they got home. And of course I hadn’t; it was long distance and I would never have dreamed of making a long distance call, especially without permission. So call I did, and her mother answered, and said, “No, she can’t come to the phone; she’s at the wedding rehearsal.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather–I never expected a married roommate! Of course, it turned out she was the church organist. And we are still friends and I can’t wait to visit her in a few weeks. BUT–I will say–we were not good roommates. She is neat, I am not, and it was tense by finals in second semester. But eventually all was forgiven.

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:43:32 +0000

Well of course I was very lucky freshman year in my Beaver Hall suite (my Dad thought that name was so funny). Also, very lucky to room with Jennifer sophomore (Shorney/”Horny” Hall) and senior years as well as a brief stint in NYC after college! We had several classes together,were rarely apart and still stayed up talking late into the night!

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:45:27 +0000

I have spoken to a number of parents who have kids going to college next year and it seems many schools employ technology to help make roommate matches. Like match.com, you input info and get put together. This is so different than what we did which was to choose “smoker” or “non-smoker”. I hope Ian gets a good one — or at least a “not-bad” one!

By: Elizabeth@Life in Pencil

Elizabeth@Life in Pencil — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:55:52 +0000

My first (randomly assigned) roommate was from LA. We had nothing in common, but it was a harmless enough match. I was a little hurt, though, when we decided to ditch me after the first quarter to live elsewhere, but didn’t tell me until the DAY BEFORE new roommate selection closed. Luckily, I had made friends with a girl down the hall, and we roomed together happily for the next two years.