There are a few—some might say many— widely held sources of complaints amongst Jewell’s student body; whether it is the persistently inconsistent, yet dependably uncomfortable, building temperatures or the inconvenient lack of parking. Amidst these things we all care to complain about are laundry services and etiquette. I asked a few students about their experiences.

Not long ago, an unnamed senior experienced what some would call, or at least the senior would, a blatant disregard for basic laundry room etiquette. After placing her clothes in the Melrose dormitory washers, she left her dryer balls on each washer lid with the intent of conveniently placing them with each load once they were moved to a dryer. However, a fellow Melrose resident had other plans. The senior returned promptly, a short thirty-five minutes later, to find her dryer balls missing.

The senior, a force to not be reckoned with, waited to see who the culprit was. It did not take long before the culprit revealed themselves. The culprit denied knowing how the dryer balls wound up in their laundry. However, the senior remains convinced that the dryer balls were taken and used by the culprit and not a mysterious third party. Understandably, the senior does not find the idea of a random havoc inducing laundry room distuber convincing.

When asked about her thoughts on appropriate laundry room etiquette, the senior responded, “As a rule, don’t touch other people’s stuff.” She did, however, add a few further considerations: “Because laundry is free, I think it’s okay to move someone’s clothes from the dryers into the washers after waiting five to 10 minutes. It also makes sense to me to move laundry out of the dryers. If you really don’t want people to touch your stuff, do what I do and make sure to move your laundry soon after it is done.” The senior further emphasized, “If it’s not to free up washers or dryers, leave other people’s things alone.”

Proper laundry room etiquette is a topic that students often discuss. Students tend to fall on two sides of the issue. On the one hand, many students argue residents should remove their own laundry within the five to 10 minute window, give or take a few minutes. It’s your stuff, you are responsible for it, or so the argument goes. Other’s adopt the position offered by the previously mentioned senior. As college students, we all have busy lives. It’s understandable if a resident forgets their laundry or does not return to move it for a while. Laundry is free, so it’s not much of an inconvenience for others to move laundry from washers to dryers. However, residents should not take offense if their laundry is moved after five to 10 minutes.

Besides appropriate laundry room behavior, students also have serious complaints about laundry services. Sophomore Kandace Gill notes, “Machines are often broken or occupied, so I usually go off of campus to the laundromat to avoid any issues.” While students enjoy free services on campus, they come with several problems. Many students complain of the lack of washers and dryers available. Yet, the biggest inconvenience is probably the weak dryers. It often takes two to three cycles to fully dry clothes, even when students only partially fill dryers.

To mitigate these problems, students have devised a few coping mechanisms. Some, like Gill, do their laundry off campus either at parents’ houses or at other locations. Some students do laundry at less busy times, such as on Sunday mornings when most students choose to sleep in. To navigate around drying problems, many students choose to air dry their damp clothes when one dryer cycle is not enough.

One of the perks of going to Jewell is free laundry. Undeniably, inappropriate laundry room behavior and recent service issues take a bit of the shine off of the deal. With a shift to more thoughtful laundry room etiquette and a few maintenance repairs, laundry would be one less topic for Jewell students to complain about.

The first week went pretty well. They were tidy and generally stayed out of the way. I tried my best to give them space since we all barely knew each other. I had my side of the dorm and they had theirs.

Around the third week of us living together, the situation started to get messy. After we had plenty of time to get to know each other, and we had quickly became close friends, that’s when it hit me: these guys are super clingy. Not just a normal clingy — I mean that they literally climb me and do not let go. They protest when I try to stop them from digging through my trash can, they scream and play all night and they knock over every cup I have. It was getting ridiculous.

I eventually set down some ground rules after a very tiring winter break. I now make sure they have what they need, we spend time together and I let them play at reasonable times. They started sleeping at night and playing with their own toys instead of my school supplies. Of course, I still get used as a jungle gym, but that’s the cost of having two crazy roommates. After warming up to them, I am proud to have met and adopted Killer Fish and Berry the Rat.

Before I begin talking about friendship, I would like to give a disclaimer. My experiences, and the experiences of the people I have interviewed, are not universal. These reflections on how friendships change do not necessarily relate to how everyone else’s friendships change – though perhaps my general comments and the interviews I’ve conducted will help you, dear reader, understand the nature of your changing friendships.

I have interviewed people to find out about three different kinds of friends – high school friends, college friends and roommates. The interviews provide a characterization of the different kinds of friendships that we can use to compare the friendships to each other.

Before getting into this characterization of friendship, I want to make some comments concerning the nature of college, for understanding the nature of college will help us understand how it is that college itself affects friendships.

College is an intense time for all of us. The change from living in your hometown with your family to moving to a totally new environment without – or with very little – familial support can be very stressful. Furthermore, we also have to adjust to a change in workload. But one of the biggest changes is your friend group. You go from being in a group of teenagers trying to find their stride in their formative years to being a young adult creating the building blocks of your life. The connections you make in college can feel very different from the ones in high school.

I first decided to approach a high school friend and ask her about her opinions on high school friendships. She described high school friends as those that she sits and “has lunch with.” She also says hi to those friends in the hallway and engages in some pleasant small talk with them.
When asked about how her friendships in high school had changed, my friend said that she does not really talk to them anymore. She said, “Instagram is enough to know about each other’s lives.”

From my friend’s statements, it seemed to me as though most people don’t have a special connection with their high school friends. However, when I compare these statements with my experiences of friendship in college, it becomes clear to me that I am closer to my college friends and that I have a more meaningful experience with my friends in college. I don’t fully understand why, but I think part of it has to do with the amount of time that I spend with my college friends, as opposed to my high school friends.

For example, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I have a biology class with my friends in it. That class meets for an hour each day, which means that I see my friends automatically for at least three hours a week, every week. Usually, my friends and I decide to work together to make sure that our homework is as accurate as possible, which means that I spend another three hours per week with my friends. This amounts to six hours total per week of contact with my friends.

Furthermore, if an individual has labs with a particular friend or other classes with that friend or if you just want to hang out with your friends on the weekends, then that bumps up the amount of time spent together anywhere from nine hours to 18 hours a week. If I had a boyfriend, I don’t think I would even spend that much time with him!

And what if your college friend happens to be your roommate? That means you probably see them around eight hours a day, or 74 hours a week. Your roommate might as well become your family.

I imagine that this seems like a huge amount of time to spend with your college friends. But, surprisingly, I never feel sick of them. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I love every moment I have with them, and I think it’s worth my time to hang out with them – time is so expensive in college, I never get enough sleep.

Furthermore, I think that the structure of college classes is better because it gives people more opportunities to bond with each other. I think it’s so exciting to talk with a friend about what you just learned in class, and both of you can discuss these ideas to reach a better, shared understanding. I promise that when this happens, you will love class more because you understand what is going on a lot better. Or, it may be that the class sucks, and you can always trash it with your friend. Your friend wouldn’t mind. They probably hate it too. That’s why you’re friends!

In terms of roommates – it seems as though one spends a whole lot of time with one’s roommate. Even though not everyone feels the same way about their roommate, I think that my roommate and I will be friends forever. We all know that it can be really frustrating to live with a new person. However, my roommate and I chose to put all of the bad things aside, and not waste time fighting that we could be laughing together instead.

I think college friendships have introduced me to a new mindset: if you have a chance to get that close to a person, use it because you never know how lucky you are until it’s too late. Developing the ability to deal with conflict with your roommate and avoid spiraling into angry screaming fights will be useful for all your future relationships, romantic or not.

I’ll always remember this one day when I was walking back to the room, and when I opened the door to the dorm, my roommate said to me: “Oh my God, you know what’s crazy? You know when you can recognize your parents’ footsteps? I can recognize yours!”

The crazy part is that she has been living with me for only three weeks.

I’m sure that everyone thinks that college friendships are going to be defined by an insane amount of partying, or at least, by one party every weekend. While it is true that parties can definitely be part of the college friendship experience, this is definitely not the highlight of college friendships.

In college, you’ll spend your days guzzling excessive amounts of coffee and writing three essays a week. So your college friendships are likely going to reflect the need to maintain an academic schedule, and to maintain it sanely. College friends, then, are like little angels that help you get through everything difficult in college, which is what differentiates from the more superficial high school friend. Going through conflict strengthens friendships, trust me.

The person you live with throughout college can easily turn into your best friend or your worst enemy. College roommates are the people you spend most of your college career with, so it’s only natural that you’re going to pick up habits from one another. Your sleep, energy, diet and average happiness can all be heavily impacted by who you choose to live with. 

College Choice names this “the Roommate Effect” and says it can have a big impact on your future. According to Amondson, having a roommate with an increasing GPA can also increase your own. For every one-point increase your own can increase by .11 on average. Study habits can be spread without roommates even realizing it. 

Exercising and diets are also affected. Often you go grocery shopping or out to eat with your roommate, so if your roommate buys more sugary foods you will be tempted to buy the same. This also means if your roommate ventures to the gym more habitually you will feel encouraged and motivated to go with them. This is pretty cool because setting healthy lifestyles for yourself could rub off on your peers. 

Happiness levels are also spread. It’s pretty common for a smile to be shared, but living for a certain amount of time with someone can actually cause you to mimic their expressions. This mostly applies to couples – but honestly I probably spend more time with my roommate than with a significant other – so this applies to both.

“Zajonc suggested that older couples looked more alike because people in close contact mimic each other’s facial expressions. In other words, if your partner has a good sense of humor and laughs a lot, he or she will probably develop laugh lines around their mouth — and so will you.”

I decided to put these theories to the test by interviewing some roomies on campus. Sophomore communication major Kolbee (Koko) Kealoha and sophomore biochemistry major Aly Manhart have been roommates since last year and have gotten closer and closer the more time they spend together. They agreed that they definitely picked up similar habits. 

 “We definitely pick up on each others lingo,” Kealoha said. “We literally read each other’s minds. We’ll be walking sometimes or just sitting and we’ll say the same thing at the same time and just look at each other and go like wait what?” 

Manhart and Kealoha were teammates before they were roommates, but since living together they have exchanged habits such as calling the fridge an icebox, which is something Kealoha did and Manhart does now, or eating guacamole, which is something Kealoha didn’t like but now does because Manhart always has it. They also push each other to do better in classes and life. 

“Aly has had a lot harder classes this semester, and she’ll be studying and remind me to study more,” Kealoha said. “Or we’ll both make each other put our phones down and get off them and take 45 minutes to do homework without any distractions or talking.” 

Since Manhart and Kealoha have healthy college habits they can help each other grow. Your habits are something to be super conscious about since you can actually affect the mood, habits and overall growth of your roommate. The saying “good habits rub off on others” truly applies here, so go out and smile, study and enjoy your college life – so that your roommate can too.