I have had several bad roommates in my time at Eastern. 

Disclaimer: Not all roommates I had were bad; I enjoyed a few of them.   

At first, I thought it was me. Turns out it wasn’t.  

However, as I gear up to move into my new apartment with my, hopefully, last roommate ever, my boyfriend of almost two years, I cannot help but notice some little things which irritate me that he does, and I know it is the same for him.  

I am clean, precise and organized.  

He is not.  

Although, he is getting better at it, I cannot help but wonder if I am the way I am because of my obsessive compulsive disorder.  

I also wonder if my OCD is getting on his nerves as we move in together.

I learned a few things with my past roommates, one such lesson being that communication is key.  

I know it’s a cliché.  

However, communicating well with others is the key to life, with roommates, work, class, relationships and friends.  

When you communicate you are more successful and relaxed.  

Honestly, I think a lot of people in today’s day and age do not know how to communicate.  

Cellphones are a nice way to communicate with someone far away from you, but we have gotten in the habit of using them to avoid making eye contact and face-to-face conversation.  

I cannot help but wonder maybe if my past roommates and I communicated properly then we might have gotten along.  

Instead most of the time we had to have a buffer in the middle.  

Now I am not saying it was just my roommates’ faults because it was also mine.  

It is a two-way street.   

I also wonder if I communicated better if we would be friends.  

I see everyone become friends with their college roommates, and cannot help but think ‘Why can’t I have that?’  

I mean for crying out loud my Mom and her college roommate are still best friends to this day, because they communicated properly and became friends.  

I am best friends with mom’s college roommate’s daughters, and so on.  

I feel like I missed out on a great experience that everyone talks about with some of my roommates.  

So, as I move into the new place with my boyfriend, I know communication is going to be better.  

Mainly, because we both know and understand how to communicate with each other. 

Katelyn Eddington is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or at kdeddington@eiu.edu