I have not shared a room with another person for an extended period of time since 1998, and I most likely have not yet grasped the practical difficulties of living alongside someone.
 
Being mired in mundane domestic squabbles is mildly amusing to me now, ensconced in chaos, sitting upon a throne of possibly clean socks.
 
I don’t want to be the kind of person who risks her dignity, her cool command of a situation, after being pushed to the brink of madness by a minor breach in laundry etiquette. I envision myself three-quarters of the way into freshman year, holding aloft a rotting mango salad from the campus cafeteria, then beginning a seemingly interminable diatribe about “self-sufficiency” and “mutual respect.” Waging a miniature Waterloo over shelf space: now, that’s about a downfall.
 
I don’t mean to mock those who have a rough time adjusting to the particular peculiarities of their new roommate, who, I presume, was probably hand-waved through a matching process by a bored housing intern disillusioned by the harsh realities of work-study programs. (Let’s not pretend all universities lend equal credence to the fine art of roommate selection.)
 
I’ve been using a university-approved Facebook app called RoomSurf, the so-called eHarmony for roommates, meant to match the dorm-bound and minimize any drama stemming from irreconcilable differences in hygiene patterns and circadian rhythms.
 
So far, it’s been a wash.
 
Students seem to be falling victim to the blank profile effect. Common sense dictates that if one is trying to ensnare a juicy freshman fly in one’s web of torrid drama, the approach should be enticing, even irresistible, and the payoff staggering.
 
Or it could be that my profile is utterly repugnant … I am wearing Minnie Mouse ears in the photo.
 
Perhaps it’s my fondness for oversharing, but I, for one, do not believe that a roommate profile is the proper place to demonstrate one’s self-restraint. I don’t have to hear about the comedy of errors that was your seventh-grade spring semiformal (Did Lorenzo really think that line would work?), but if you have a tendency to power through the Devil’s hour watching “Golden Girls” reruns and crying, I’d like to know that. (Caveat: That’s my Tuesday routine, too.)
 
My future home at the University of Arizona will be Yuma Hall, an honors dorm situated near a handful of academic buildings. I’ve never actually stepped inside Yuma, but I did sit on a power grid not far from the front door while my mother furiously snapped photos for relatives who, as products of the Cal State commuter school system, have never lived on campus and view dorm life as an quaint experiment, like a biosphere or an amusement park where the robots go berserk and kill people.
 
I think that momentary brush with general proximity is sufficient preparation for the day-to-day realities of doing homework, watching TV and brushing my teeth alongside 183 strangers who might not find my habit of warbling along to Cole Porter at four in the morning quite so, er, endearing.
 
Why did I choose Yuma, you ask? I give you, my criteria for dorms:
functioning windows
honors exclusive
architectural character
not haunted
strategically situated
not haunted
reasonably priced
not haunted
 
It’s a historic building. There are in-room sinks. Every year students host a Halloween extravaganza in the basement, not unlike the beloved Frazier Fright Night here at Las Vegas Academy.
 
These are my priorities. I opted for Yuma for the same reason that I tossed aside a well-worn suburban school system in favor of a rundown, ramshackle campus a stone’s throw away from some of the sketchiest streets in the Southwest. It’s because I wanted to challenge myself (as much as one can challenge oneself in a comfortable, well-kept honors dorm), and also because I am not afraid of inconsistent heating, questionable plumbing and other harsh vagaries of human innovation circa 1939.
 
Thirteen years in the Clark County School District in Nevada has bred a hardiness in my soul comparable to that of a crusty mountain hermit in the Gabby Hayes mode.
 
As of now, I have few plans apart from trying to see if a friend of mine, Lisa, can transfer into my dorm so that we can room together. Maintaining some semblance of normality — that’s the key, I assume, to surviving freshman year.
 
Lisa is smart, driven, composed, and I’m… I can make microwave quesadillas? Sometimes? If the cheese is already shredded? Clearly I am the ideal.
 
Even if Lisa can’t finagle things to get into Yuma, I know I’m a top prize. Potential roommates will throw themselves at my feet like so many roses tossed at an aging matinee idol squeaking his way through “Death of a Salesman” in a Midwestern dinner theater.
 
I’m sure that’ll happen. Any day now.