So, You Want to be BFFs With Your Roommate: UTSC Students on the Realities of Living with Roommates

The roommates—a horror story or a tale of friendship, fun and adventures? UTSC students reveal their experiences with house-sharing in Scarborough and provide advice on how to survive living with roommates in your first-year.

Photo Courtesy of Apartments (Upper Year Housing) | Student Housing & Residence Life

Starting as a first-year student at UofT and embarking on an advanced post-secondary educational experience is both an exciting and terrifying new endeavour. University institutions constitute a transitional environment where teenagers have a place to mature and blossom into adulthood. Discovering their passions, interests, values, and ethics, students come to know themselves better by taking on greater responsibilities.

With new friends, classes, professors, and movie-esque impressions of what it means to have a university experience, the possibilities—and perhaps expectations—are numerous. However, adjusting to the new environment and routines brings its own challenges.

Not only does that entail new academic duties such as keeping up with academically challenging course material, several dense readings, and navigating through the labyrinth that is the UTSC campus to find your next class; but also the responsibilities of adulthood. And for some—especially international students—that means moving away from home.

Living in a new environment with people from all kinds of backgrounds and household habits means adjusting and blending everyone's lifestyles in one shared space. 

While living on residence with other students your age can be fun, this also does not guarantee you will be friends with your roommates. And, without taking the right precautions, a shared living space can quickly turn into a nightmare. 

When recalling their experience living off-campus and away from their hometown in Ontario for the first time, one student says it was both challenging and beneficial. “The independence was good but it’s hard merging lifestyles with strangers.” 

In their first year, UTSC students choose between either residence housing or living off-campus where living accommodations are most often shared. 

UTSC residence advisors recommended living on campus as a first-year student. “If you can afford it, it's worth it for first-year students,” says one Resident Advisor (RA). 

The advisor believes that first-year students integrate into the school environment more easily by being close to campus through easier accessibility to clubs, classes, and school events, along with residence-exclusive gatherings where meeting peers is natural. 

Multiple students had mentioned that although the people they lived with began as strangers, living in close quarters provided an intimate space that allowed them to become closer as they were compelled to learn more about one another. 

Many students shared the common experience of the “one month rule”: The first month of living with new roommates can feel natural, easy, and friendly. However once the excitement and longing for making a good impression on one another fades, things quickly change as the true colours of the roommates–their natural living habits and personalities– come to light. 

“On residence, the biggest problem is roommate conflict,” says the RA. 

Cleanliness was one of the most common issues brought up by the students that soiled the experience of house sharing. 

One student describes how their housemates were unclean, especially in the shared kitchen that remained unkempt. “The fridge was so full it was probably a health hazard,” the student recalls.

The student describes the issue of cleanliness as a domino effect. He said that “one person's lack of commitment to stay clean makes the next [person] feel like there’s no point [in cleaning] since that person will just ruin their efforts, and [this behaviour] chains.” 

Another RA directs this issue to a lack of “house-training” where students growing up in families where household responsibilities and chores were not part of their routine lack some of the basic skills and manners in home maintenance. 

Other students, although they experienced no major issues with their housemates, mentioned violent and aggressive boyfriends and other unexpected guests that would cause discomfort in their homes. 

One student shared how her experience living in a residence “party house” made the environment less comfortable, as the frequency of parties taking place on multiple nights throughout the week became an issue, especially during exam season. 

The residence advisors believe that although it is possible to find a lifelong friend through residence, it's also not common.

Navigating the boundaries between wanting to sustain a friendship, and also telling your housemates to clean up after themselves or stop partying on weeknights, can create complicated dynamics that might even feel morally challenging. However, it is necessary. 

From the get-go, communication is essential. 

“Learn to set boundaries from the start,” advises one RA. 

One student described how different sleep schedules, tidying habits, sharing facilities (like bathrooms), and conflicting cooking schedules became a hassle and led to annoyances between roommates.

However, they advise first-year students not to sweat about minor inconveniences in order to keep peace and avoid unnecessary conflicts within the house. 

“We try to be open minded and not pick on the small stuff,” the student says.

Most students believe that being friends with your roommates is often up to chance. One student says “some houses just click more than others.” 

“It’s just luck really,” he adds.

A residence advisor says one of the benefits of living on residence rather than off-campus, however, is the accessible, additional support provided to first-year students. From being a student living in residence at UTSC to now working as an RA herself, she says, “I regret not reaching out… talk to your RA [and] get the support you need”.  

It is important and valuable to take advantage of the resources at your disposal. RAs are available at any time to address concerns not only about roommates, but also to further help with academic and career success.

When living with strangers, “you just butt heads a lot,” says one RA. 

Although some students made some friends through off-campus housing, they believe joining clubs and staying social on campus is a better way of making connections than expecting to be friends with your housemates. 

“Don't come into it [residence] thinking you're going to make the bestest of friends” she adds. 

Being closer to the school community, meeting other people your age, and meeting those with similar interests are all benefits of living on campus. However, it is important to take initiative and get involved, have an open mind, and be social in order to create memories and make friends.  

A lot of the common issues residence advisors faced included noise complaints, late phone calls, early alarms, and cleanliness. But one RA believes that roommate conflicts are minor compared to the issues with off-campus housing. 

Off-campus housing exposed her to even more serious issues. 

Unclean and irresponsible roommates are nothing compared to the sinister power of unnerving landlords—that's where the true horror begins. 

“I just assumed that everybody did things legally,” she says. However, she soon realized that off-campus housing can be sketchy in that landlords are quick to take advantage of student renters, often breaching contracts and bending laws. 

When discussing her first off-campus house, she mentions the landlord's strange requests when paying rent. “She made me pay in only cash,” she recalls. 

And by the time she had moved into her second off-campus house, the student notes the landlord visiting the house as he pleased. 

“He would enter the house without [giving us] a 24 hour notice,” she says, adding that he would even enter the student’s bedrooms to show unfamiliar future tenants the property without prior warning.

Another student mentions troubles with appliances where hot water became a scarce resource in their bathroom. One which the landlord refused to repair. “In the end it was never fixed,” he says.  

For international students, living away from home is not only living away from a hometown, but is also about assimilating to cultural norms and finding a community in a new country. Without the support of familiar faces, this can make the experience lonely.  

However, a home away from home can also be advantageous in providing cultural understanding. A home away from home can also function as a mixing pot containing individuals of various backgrounds, cultivating a space to learn more about one another's cultures and perspectives that students wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. 

“It's still nice to have people around,” says one international student, who describes how they found new support systems in their roommates and friends. Ones they can share simple pleasures with, such as enjoying a meal together. Although roommates are far from their biological family located thousands of kilometers away, they can still make a space feel like home through the shared conversations, laughs and closeness.

Another international student from China describes how adjusting to life in Scarborough was a major culture shock, especially in terms of safety. 

According to the student, sharing an off-campus basement with six other people—including both students and working professionals from different cultural backgrounds—was a positive, eye-opening experience that broadened their perspective. However, they also recall the landlord kicking all the tenants out of the shared illegal basement before a home inspection. With less than a month's notice to vacate the home during exam season, this created a very unstable and unsafe environment for the student who would not have anticipated such circumstances. 

They also describe how the issues with violence and crime were greater than they expected or made aware of prior to moving to Canada. They recalled how they felt safe spending late nights out in China, even past three in the morning, without worry. However, while out on a nighttime jog in their neighborhood (in one of the deemed “safer” areas in Scarborough) they were harassed by a stranger on the street, unprovoked. 

For many locals, this is just another day in Toronto, however, this also speaks to a larger issue of safety in the city. The student now knows to stay more vigilant, however, harassment is not something that would make any newcomer to a country feel welcome, nor should the experience be normalized as a social right of passage in order to understand what conditions in the city are truly like. Regardless, the student takes the experiences as a learning opportunity, and believes that being adaptable and accepting of your circumstances is most important.

When we find ourselves in new places, being dealt a new hand of card, the experiences shape who we are, our confidence in ourselves, and our ability to communicate and navigate through challenging environments. 

An experience with a bad roommate or disagreeable housemates might feel less favourable in the moment, yet still contributes to personal growth in this new stage of young adulthood. Regardless of the troubles and turmoil, UTSC students agree that the experience of having roommates is a lesson in independence, adaptability, communicating with others, and taking responsibility.  

“Living with strangers is a hit or miss” but “it builds character,” says one student. 

However difficult the transition—even the shocking, disagreeable, unexpected, or uncomfortable anecdotes that inevitably arise from living with roommates—needless to say, adds to the plot.