What it's like to switch roommates midway through the year

Roommates are incredibly fickle — some become lifelong friends, while others quickly fade into the background. Yet, it is a rarity at Penn to switch roommates halfway through the year.

College freshman Jasmine Clark has had three different girls move in and out of her room within just the first couple months of school. Clark is part of Harrison College House’s Freshmen Experience and ironically chose to live there because she “liked the rooming style.”

Clark has had various roommate woes, including one instance when one of her roommates, who wanted her own space, moved her own bed and personal items into the kitchen. Clark attributed these roommate problems to various factors, including the roommate agreement drafted at the start of the year and the room setup. Ultimately though, Clark found it to be the mixture of her roommates’ personalities that caused the most issues.

“Each person brought their own dynamic. A lot of crazy of stuff went down due to lack of communication. It threw me off of what Penn would be. It was hard to focus with everything going on.”

She still does not know if she could get yet another roommate in the spring semester.

Although Clark has had her fair share of roommate issues this semester, she has found a home in Harrison’s Freshman Experience program.

“I really like the program. All my hallmates and I are really close. I would not trade the Freshmen Experience for anything.”

Engineering freshman Young Lee also switched roommates, but his experience was far more positive than Clark’s. Lee moved from his single in Ware to a quad in New College House. When one of his friends’ roommates took a leave of absence, Young was asked if he wanted to move into the open spot.

“It took a while. The process of switching between dorms, I found out, logistically, takes a lot from the administration.”

Once Lee and his new roommates knew that the room was vacant, he moved into the open room. However, he was supposed to wait until he received permission from housing to move in. As a result, for a couple of weeks he had two homes on Penn’s campus.

“An administrator came to see if the room was vacant and found me sleeping in the room. I had to move back — I basically got evicted.”

Unlike Clark, Lee had the benefit of knowing his roommates and their living habits before he made the choice to move in. In choosing to move, he also took into consideration the proximity of New College House to his classes, most of which are in David Rittenhouse Laboratory. Lee’s suitemates also had common schedules because they were all in engineering.

Despite the switch to the modern New College House, Lee does find things that he misses about the Quadrangle, such as a sense of community in his hall. Lee has found that this experience has allowed him to make more informed choices about where he wants to live in the future.

“I feel like I kind of got the best of both worlds.”

However, getting new roommates is not something only freshmen experience. Engineering graduate student Josef Hoenzsch recalled that during their junior year at Penn, they also switched roommates in the middle of the year.

Hoenzsch found that it is harder for low income students to balance finding affordable housing, buying food and purchasing other items such as textbooks. Hoenzsch spent time exploring their options and found that subletting for each semester was the best option financially, which meant switching roommates.

In the fall semester, Hoenzch didn’t hold much sentiment for their apartment.

“I didn’t know my first roommate. I went to that place to sleep. It was the basement. I saved quite a bit of money,” they said.

In the spring semester, Hoenzsch moved into another off campus apartment. This time, their roommates were some of their closer friends.

“It was the best thing ever. It was so much better of an environment. I spent more time at home.”