How Problems Emerge Between Roommates in Universities

University Degree Education and Teaching

In China, most university students live on campus with roommates together. This living condition can provide them opportunities to contact and learn to get along with different kinds of people. In my dormitory room are four girls who came from different cities from different provinces of the country, live together in an about 20sq. room. We are classmates and, therefore, spend most time together studying, resting and entertaining. This is a typical and the simplest living condition of Chinese universities. We benefit a lot from this life style. Nevertheless, living in a dormitory may also create problems between roommates because of their different personalities, miscommunication and the lack of forgiveness.

Misunderstandings exist essentially because they have different personalities of the roommates. Before students entered universities and met each other, they were brought up in different families. Different life experience and circles gave them totally different personalities. According to the personality research web (2001), personality is completely described as the five-factor model that is comprised of five dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (Five-Factor Model. A trait). Divergences in any of these aspects can unavoidably lead to problems.

There is a story of my friend Vivian, who is really an easy-going girl. Vivian had made good friends with one of her roommates Judy in the beginning of their dormitory life. They are both lovely girls except the difference that Vivian is easily satisfied with current life while Judy is ambitious and keeps asking for more. Due to the different value systems, they often found it hard to reach agreement when they face problems. Both refused to yield and at last their friendship ended. In paper Resolving Roommate Conflict, Doctor Roy (1999) pointed out that, “everyday disagreements, differences in opinion, and the clash of different ideas, beliefs, interests, and values are the bases for conflict among roommates”(Roy P.2) Yet roommate conflicts are more than just a simple debate or discussion of these differences. Instead, conflicts between roommates occur when discussion of such differences and opposing interests turn into escalating displays of emotional hostility. Vivian said she didn’t care what Judy does to herself. However, she can’t bear Judy’s fastidious demands to others. That’s the very conflict standing between the girls.

In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the word conflict was explained as that it comes from the Latin word, Conflicts, meaning "collision" and "to strike together or to contend." (Willie P.308) Therefore, conflict represents an escalation of everyday competition and discussion into a hostile or emotion-provoking encounter. It occurs when one person's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are in opposition to those of another person. Conflicts can occur between individuals and groups. They are generally classified as differences in value, culture differences; and strategic conflicts. There’re many potential sources of conflict in any living situation, the essential one of which is ...

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When diversities come out and may be impossible to ignore, the lack of communication becomes the obstacle that makes matter hard to smoothen. Many roommates entered into their living-together relationships with high hopes and positive expectations. When roommates are also friends, they believe that everything will go smoothly between them. However, people change, circumstances change, good friends do not certainly became the good roommates. In his book Develop University Students to be Perfect Persons with Psychology, Professor Nie Xigang (1993), explained that university students whose thoughts are not formed completely often have the character of being easy-going but hard to be understood, because they have developed their own ways of thinking and logics of life (P.13) Thus, they usually find that the longer they live together, the harder to know each other in-depth.

Often the basis of disputes is a lack of good communication or a mismatch of expectations between roommates. Consequently, conflict is an inevitable part of most interpersonal relationships. The key to resolution is not to avoid conflict, but to recognize it and manage it effectively in order to produce the best possible outcome. By first identifying the source of the problem and then using appropriate problem solving skills, university roommates may become effective at resolving their own conflicts.

Being unable to forgive may worsen problems if roommates just keep silent and let the problem grow. Many roommates moved into their living-together relationships with high hopes and positive expectations. However, because they spend too much time together with too little room for privacy, conflicts arise everyday. They may wrangled on whether sleep with the window open or closed, who is responsible for making the long distance calls on a phone bill, and sometimes receiving a poor grade on an exam leads one to become irritable and argumentative with his/her roommate over emptying the trash. In a word, details such as individual preferences, factual Conflicts, misunderstandings or mistakes, competition for resources, role conflicts and external stress may create conflicts. Here and now, forgiveness seems to be especially important. In fact, relationships of any kind involve a bit of work, some give and take, and a forgiveness of each other. Dr. Fratzke once said that relationship between roommates was somewhat like that of a couple in marriage. As far as I am concerned, dormitory life is sometimes more difficult than marriage itself since roommates even don’t know each other before moving into the same apartment.

When I moved in, I assumed that all living responsibilities would be equally divided between my roommates and I. One of my roommates Julia and I were surprised when we found that another girl in our dormitory would not wash dishes or clean up after herself. "I really got fed up with the mess." Julia said, "Yesterday I picked up everything of hers, including dirty dishes, empty milk packs and shoes, and I threw everything into a garbage bag. Then, I stapled a nice little note stating that next time I would throw it all away. I tossed it all on her desk." Julia went to an extreme in dealing with that girl, and we both admitted there were better ways to handle our problems. "Maybe I have to learn to adjust to her," she said when once talked about it with me, "or else both of our lives will be a living hell."

This situation may be worse in boys’ dormitories. “While staying in East 2 (a residence hall), my roommate and I always got into fights,” my friend Simon said. “We even got into a physical fight once over something stupid.”

Roommates are sometimes too grumpy to negotiate how such matters will be handled best when they arise. This often is the case because individuals do not feel they can bring up their troubles in a non-threatening manner. Concerns about disputes may be in a fashion that does not lead to compromise, agreement on solutions, and an exposure of feelings about the matter of concern. Then the problem may cease with feelings left unresolved. As this process repeats with the same or other concerns, frustration, interpersonal tension, and anger develop.

Conflicts in dormitory life emerge originally because different personalities of roommates engenders disagreement, the lack of forgiveness impede the resolution and then the want of communication made problems even worse. My experience with dormitory life brings me memories that are both painful and pleasant at the same time. Some of these occurrences might be so serious that they may hurt me and be hard to forget. However, I also meet one of my best friends in the dorm. In her essay “Why Can't We All Just Get Along”, Kelly mentioned a junior in advertising from East Pretoria named Goodwin said, “Remember that not all relationships are set in stone”. Goodwin gave someone who hates his or her roommates advice just to “take it day by day” because after all “Situation cannot last forever.”(P.1) In a word, the prospect of living with roommates should not be something students should dread.

References

Five-Factor Model (Jan. 2001). Retrieved Oct.23, 2002,from:

http://www.personalityresearch.org/bigfive.html

Roy J. (1999). “Resolving Roommate Conflict.” Retrieved Oct.23, 2002,from

http://www.stuaff.niu.edu/legal/roommsur.htm

Willie S. (1998). Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

Beijing: The Commercial Press

Nie Xigang (1993). Develop University Students to be Perfect Persons with

Psychology Sichuan: Sichuan University Press

Kelly (Oct. 2002). “Why can't we all just get along?” Daily Egyptian Reports.

Egyptian: Egyptian Daily Press