Andrea is a sophomore in college. Last year, she lived on campus. This year, she lives with two other girls in a three-bedroom apartment off campus. It’s the first month of college classes and things are not going well. Andrea has a major problem: she’s living with bad roommates.
Andrea is already so sick of her roommates. They never clean up. They never do the dishes. Their laundry is always in piles on the floor in the kitchen. She always has to keep her door locked or they will go into her room and borrow her things without asking. At night, they invite their friends over and stay up late playing music, talking and laughing loudly, so she cannot fall asleep until very late. When she comes out of her room to ask them to be quiet, their friends look at her like she’s annoying.
Because she’s living with bad roommates, Andrea hasn’t slept well in days. She has to wake up early four days a week to go to her eight o’clock classes, but is almost never ready to get out of bed when her alarm goes off. Last week, she hit “snooze” four times and ended up arriving 15 minutes late to her biology lecture.
Last year, when she was a freshman, Andrea was in classes in huge lecture halls with hundreds of other students. She could arrive a little bit late and nobody would really notice or care. She was able to just sit down in the crowd of other students and the professor never said a thing about it. This year, her classes are a lot smaller and she has made friends with a lot of classmates.
“I’m so sorry!”, she says to the professor as she enters her classroom. The professor nods and holds out a hand, as if to say “it’s ok.”, but Andrea feels completely embarrassed. She sits down next to Janelle, who pushes her notebook over to Andrea so that she can begin copying the notes from the beginning of the class.
“My roommates are so damn inconsiderate,” she whispers to Janelle.
“What happened?” Janelle asks.
“They were up partying again until four in the morning!” Andrea responds.
“Ooo, girl, you’ve got to find another place to live,” Janelle insists, “this is the second time you’eve come late to class this week. You’ll never make honor roll again this semester if you don’t sleep.” Andrea hears what Janelle says. They have only been friends for about a year, but Andrea knows how good Janelle’s judgment is.
“What about the lease?” Andrea asks.
“Just find a sub,” Janelle suggests. “Your landlord doesn’t care who’s living there as long as they pay the rent.”
Andrea decides she’s going to take Janelle’s great advice, break the lease and move. First, she’ll have to look online to find a new apartment…