Jacqueline. We became roommates in grad school, having met because we were in the same degree program. I spent the summer between the first and second year of grad school in another city, working on an internship. While I was gone, I sent her my rent check every month. When I returned – a few days before classes were to start – she told me she wanted to start living on her own because she needed to work on herself to be “more centered.” She found a new apartment the next day, and I had to scramble to find either a new roommate or a new apartment. But, since the new semester was about to start, everyone I knew already had living arrangements and all the affordable housing was already taken. Over the next week or two, she bugged me every day, asking what I was going to do, because she wanted to give our landlord notice right away since she already knew she was moving out and she didn’t want to get stuck paying rent on two different apartments. In the end, I couldn’t find a new roommate, so I moved into an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood where we had to change the exterior locks because we found a homeless man sleeping in our lobby. We also had to call the cops on my neighbor, because he was beating up his girlfriend. (And this apartment was even more expensive for me because I was now living on my own!) I still had to take classes with her almost every day over the next year, and we even had to work on group projects together.


Sabrina